


Somewhere I Have Never Travelled

by Alethnya



Category: Star Trek Into Darkness - Fandom, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: Into Darkness - Fandom
Genre: AU, F/M, Star Trek: Into Darkness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-16
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-01-01 17:28:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 34
Words: 245,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1046568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alethnya/pseuds/Alethnya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lt. Rebecca Duval is a seasoned Section 31 operative. The job is her life and she lives it with single-minded dedication-orders are followed to the letter and without question. When she's assigned to act as handler to Commander John Harrison, everything changes. He's ruthless, he's calculating...and now, he's her responsibility. Starts 1 year Pre-Into Darkness. Khan/OFC.  Cross Posted from FFN.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**somewhere i have never travelled**

**Alethnya**

 

 

_nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals_

_the power of your intense fragility:whose texture_

_compels me with the color of its countries,_

_rendering death and forever with each breathing_

_-ee cummings_

 

____________________________________________________________________________________

**Disclaimer:  I own nothing.**

**A/N:   So I finally had a chance to see _Star Trek Into Darkness_ and like the glutton for punishment I am, I just had to go and fall in love with it.  Y’know, because apparently I don’t have enough stories taking up residence in my head, so I had to go and toss one more on the pile.  So, please, read…enjoy.  Reviews are love.**

**____________________________________________________________________________________**

 

**Chapter One**

 

_London.  2257.351_

It was raining again.  A thick, steady, soaking rain that fell in ever deepening puddles from a steel-gray sky so thick with clouds that it was doubtful there be would be even a glimpse of sun that day.

 

Which, really, was fine by her—she wasn’t feeling particularly sunny herself.

 

Limping along the sodden sidewalk, only half-heartedly sticking to the covered bits, Lieutenant Rebecca Duval longed to be tucked up in bed with a book and a cup of hot chicory and enjoying the first real leave time she’d had in almost two years—exactly where she had been not two hours ago.  But leave or not, injured or not…when she was called in, she went; a fact that was doubly true when it was Admiral Marcus himself requesting her presence in his office at 1100 sharp.  The Admiral was the single most powerful man in all of Starfleet—both the known and the unknown parts of it—and anyone with a brain in their head or an ambition in their body knew that when he said jump, you jumped.  No questions, no comments, no exceptions or excuses.

 

So she had gotten up, gotten dressed and had firmly ignored the thin sliver of annoyance that wove its way through the innate dedication.  She had left earlier than would normally be necessary, knowing that her hampered gait was going to mean a longer trip, but she was still going to be there well before the requested time.  A fact which was, no doubt, fully anticipated if not outright expected.  To the Admiral, punctuality was not just a courtesy; it was a demonstration of respect.

 

And she had never been anything but early to any meeting she’d ever had with him.

 

Hobbling through the glass doors at the front of the Kelvin Memorial Archive, she veered left, away from the information desk manned by two fresh-faced Academy graduates and toward the unobtrusive door situated around the corner and down a short, narrow hallway.  Running her palm swiftly down the right hand side of the plain, metal door, she immediately heard the click of the old-fashioned latch disengaging as her bio signature was accepted.  Reaching out with her good arm—the right, luckily enough; if only one of the pair was going to come through unscathed, at least it had been the useful one—she turned the knob, at which point the seemingly antiquated door slid open with a muted hiss, revealing the crisp, white interior of a not at all antiquated turbolift. 

 

Once inside, the door whispered closed behind her and the lift immediately engaged, dropping down, down past even the lowest sub-basement of the Archive proper.  When it had reached its destination, the doors opened once more and she started forward down a low-ceilinged, narrow hall lit only sparsely by the most rudimentary overhead lamps.  At the far end, a good minute walk from the lift door, sat a single desk and behind it, a single man, whose eyes were locked on her, unblinking and unapologetically wary.  His right hand held a phaser pointed directly at her; his left was poised just above a panic button.  He wore a plain, black uniform that looked all Starfleet, but bore no distinction as to rank or designation—a plain black uniform that was echoed beneath the equally non-descript black greatcoat that she herself wore.

 

Approximately five feet from the desk, she stopped.  “Duval to see Admiral Marcus.”

 

“Prepare for biometric confirmation,” the Agent, always Girard of late, directed.

 

She did as instructed, holding still and staring straight ahead while the scanners kicked to life, stripes of green light dancing across her skin as every square inch of her face was mapped and compared to her official clearance scan.  After a moment, the light disappeared and Girard looked up from the screen mounted within the surface of the desk.

 

“Clear.”

 

She started forward immediately, limping toward the door that had slid open just to the right of the desk.  She dipped her head to her fellow Agent in perfunctory acknowledgment as she passed.  “Girard.”

 

“Duval,” he returned, then frowned.  “I’d heard you were back.  Man, they weren’t kidding were they?”

 

She stopped, half-turned back toward him, brow raised.  “About?”

 

“You really got your ass handed to you,” he elaborated, expression caught half-way between amused satisfaction and false sympathy—she expected the first, and frankly was surprised that he even bothered with the second; there was little love lost between them.  “I mean, you look like _shit_ , Duval.”

 

Auguste Girard had proven a mediocre asset to the Section at the best of times and a flaming failure at the worst.  He’d blown more covert field ops than anyone she’d known since donning the black uniform…thus, the desk job.  He wasn’t worth her very valuable time, but as she had a few moments to spare—and as she’d never done particularly well with being laughed at—she thought she might as well take a moment to give him back a bit of his own.

 

She graced him with a sweeter-than-sugar smile—a hand-me-down from her very Southern Grandmother, who’d done passive-aggressive better than anyone she’d ever known.  “Why bless your heart for trying, Girard,” she said, tone as saccharine as her expression and twice as false, “but that was just sad.  I might not be looking my best right now, but I got the job done in the end.  So next time you go looking to kick someone when they’re down, might be best if you make sure you find someone who actually _is_ down.  It can be tricky, but here’s a hint,” she leaned down toward him, expression going cold, “just look for the pretty boy parked behind a desk while everyone else is out doing work.”

 

Girard’s very pretty face went very violently red.  “You’re a real bitch, Duval.”

 

She quirked a brow at him and shot him a razor blade grin.  “Yes, I am.  And it’s part of the reason why I’m damn good at my job.  And you, Girard, are all mouth and no brain which is _all_ of the reason why you’re sitting here on your ass, pushing buttons all day.  So by all means, _Agent_ , carry on.”

 

She turned away and limped through the open door, savoring the image of his furious mortification as she left him sitting at his safe, comfy desk.

 

***

 

Five minutes later, she was standing in the anteroom of Marcus’ office, staring into the antique mirror that hung on one wall, one of many antiques that decorated the Admiral’s office space.  His official Starfleet office at Headquarters in San Francisco was typical of the times, stark and utilitarian and very modern—all gleaming steel and polished glass.  But here, in his unofficial abode, an entirely different story was told.  These rooms were all warm wood and curving lines, sumptuous fabrics and richly upholstered furnishings.  The ambiance spoke of times gone long by and a way of thinking that had gone along with it, but that the Admiral, for all his very modern ways, had been trying for quite some time to bring back from the historical dustbin.

 

Section 31, as much her home as any place had ever been, was the best example of that ambition.  Within these walls were the men and women whose job it was to make sure that the world really was the peaceful, pacifistic paradise that it was supposed to be.  And they were willing to use any means necessary to keep it that way.

 

Sometimes—thankfully not too often—that philosophy proved a painful one to live by.

 

She ran her eyes over her reflection, tracing the purple-black bruise that spanned her left cheek, the half-healed split in her lip and the butterflied gash above her right eye.  Her face most certainly bore testament to the fact that she’d recently been in a hell of a fight, but she’d been around the block enough times to know all the best ways to camouflage the full extent of her injuries.  Her dark brown hair, usually pulled tightly up into a neat chignon, hung around her face in soft waves.  She’d avoided make-up all together, as it would only have drawn attention to places she didn’t currently want attention.  In fact, the only bits of color in her face were the wounds themselves and the pale, mossy green of her eyes.  Her full length black pants—she never wore the Starfleet issue skirt anyway—hid the brace that supported her newly repaired MCL and PCL, though the unavoidable limping gait necessitated by the brace made it obvious she was wearing one.  Her long-sleeved, loose-fitting black tunic concealed not only her wrapped ribs, but also the skin-tight sleeve that covered her left arm from wrist to elbow and protected the laser-knit bones of her forearm.

 

All in all, as she’d said to Girard, she could concede that she wasn’t looking her best.  But in all honesty, she liked the wounds; considered each one a badge of honor, actually.  They told the story of a job well done under less than ideal circumstances and she wore them the way Agents like Girard never would—proudly.

 

The door to the Admiral’s office opened with a soft hiss and she immediately turned toward it, automatically snapping to attention. 

 

“Enter,” the Admiral barked, abrupt as ever.  Some Agents bristled at it; she preferred his straight-to-the-point style rather than the conciliatory song and dance approach that so many in Starfleet Command took now.

 

She walked into the office as normally as she could, forcing her limp disappear the best she could, though she knew it was rather an exercise in futility.  As soon as she was through the door, she realized that the Admiral was not alone in the office and her posture snapped just that much straighter, her expression going deliberately and carefully blank.  Keeping her eyes forward—though she took peripheral note of the five extra bodies crowding up the space to her right, she approached the large desk to her left.  “Admiral Marcus,” she acknowledged with nod, standing at attention.  “You asked to see me, sir?”

 

Admiral Alexander Marcus sat back in his oversized chair, another relic of a bygone era in a room full of them.  He was deep into his sixties now, though he was far from an old man—the bright blue eyes that regarded her appraisingly from that weathered face were far too sharp, far too _seeing,_ to belong to a truly old man.  “You’re early, Lieutenant.”

 

That had been faintly accusing and she only just held back her frown.  “I am, sir.  I apologize if I’ve interrupted, Admiral.”

 

“No, no, you haven’t interrupted anything,” he waved away her concern, eyes sliding past her to focus behind her.  “Well, nothing _important_ anyway—nothing that can’t wait.”  He looked back to her, smiling now—a wide grin that looked almost smug.  “So let’s go ahead and get this debrief taken care of, shall we?”

 

She was confused, but she didn’t even hesitate, playing along as if this was exactly the conversation she’d expected to have when she walked through the door.  “Only if you’re sure, Admiral.  I’d be happy to wait for you to finish.”

 

“Not at all, Duval.  Trust me, this works out much better for everyone.  So…” he picked up his PADD, flicking through files that she had already gone over with him a week previously, until he arrived at whichever one he was looking for, “...confirmed topaline smuggling operation on Capella IV, made deep cover contact with ringleader.  Ringleader subsequently neutralized,” he arched a brow, tossing her a look that was equal parts amused and disapproving.  “Taking full advantage of those discretionary parameter ops, I see.”

 

She returned his look with a grin and a shrug, falling easily into the role he was clearly expecting her to play.  “They did come in handy in this case, sir.”

 

The Admiral looked back down at the screen with a shake of his head.  “Let’s see…obtained information indicating Capella operation was one of many such operating along the borders of Federation space.  Also had temporary visual access to detailed log indicating…,” he set the PADD down with exactly the same sharpness that he had the last time they had this discussion, expression serious as he braced his arms on the desk and leaned toward her, “… _Klingon_ involvement.  Lieutenant, are you absolutely certain of that?”

 

“Absolutely, sir.  Admittedly, I only know a few words of the language, but I’m familiar enough with the appearance of it to be able to confidently identify it.  In fact, the bulk of the most recent transactions listed in that log point directly back to Qo'noS.”

 

Admiral Marcus let out a deep sigh, his shoulders slumping.  “Shit,” he bit out.  “Not only does that mean we’re losing valuable mineral resources to those bastards, but it suggests they’re infiltrating Federation space with ever increasing regularity.  I don’t think I need to tell you how little I like this development, Lieutenant.”

 

He was right.  He didn’t.  Mostly because he already had. 

 

“It’s certainly not an ideal situation, sir.”

 

“Hell of an understatement there, Duval.”  Another deep sigh, then his expression changed, warmed almost exponentially.  “But that was some extremely valuable intel you appropriated for us.  Another job well done, Lieutenant.  I am duly impressed.”

 

Now _that_ was different; a deviation from the script of their previous meeting.  An important one, she assumed, to whatever his purpose was for this performance.  The Admiral made it a point never to dole out praise—who saw success as nothing more than the inevitable outcome of proper training—so that he was doing it now clearly meant something.  “Thank you, sir.”

 

The Admiral leaned further back, looking up at her with concern.  “However, Doctor Pedregon wasn’t quite as impressed.  He informs me in his report that you’re grounded for the foreseeable future while you heal up.”  He stopped and gave her a visual once over.  “We’re sure going to miss you around here until you get back.  Tell me, how _are_ you feeling, Lieutenant?”

 

“I’ve felt better,” she admitted, recognizing that they were finally coming to the point of this entire charade the Admiral had enacted, “but I’ve also felt worse.  And there’s really no need for me to be missed, sir; I patched up well enough that the Doctor saw no need to place me on mandatory medical leave.  I may not be cleared for the field, but I can still be useful.”

 

“Is that so?”  The Admiral’s eyes were almost glowing with approval now, though still intense in their regard.  Once more, his focus shifted to behind her.  After a moment, his lips curved into a slow, calculating grin.  “Well doesn’t that just work out _perfectly_?”

 

There was suddenly a thickness to the air, a palpable tension that she was very careful not to react to.  “Sir?”

 

“I’ve just thought of a way that you can, in fact, be useful while you’re stuck in dry dock, Duval.”  He snapped his eyes back to hers, all business and no warmth to be found now.  “Are you up for it?”

 

“Always, sir.”  No act there; just straight, simple truth.

 

Marcus was silent for a moment, studying her…measuring her.  Apparently satisfied, he nodded once more, meaningfully.  “You’ve continually proven yourself to be one of the best we’ve got.  Usually I’d be loath to pull you from active duty for anything, but since you’re out of commission anyway, I can’t think of anyone more qualified for this particular job.”  He stood, moved around the desk and motioned for her to stand as well.  “We’ve…acquired a new Agent,” he said, and the way he said it spoke volumes.

 

“Have we?”

 

“We have,” Marcus repeated.  “And I’m afraid he’s going to need quite a bit of…acclimation.”

 

She was intrigued, and it seemed the appropriate response, so she allowed it to show on her face.  “How so, sir?”

 

The Admiral waved off her question.  “A subject for later, Duval.  For now, I think introductions are in order.”

 

Taking that as her cue to turn around, she did just that, immediately eyeing and cataloging every detail of the scene that lay before her. 

 

As she’d noted upon entering, there were five people occupying the sitting area of the Admiral’s office.  Four of them she recognized as being part of the private security detail that Marcus employed for the Section.  Those four were positioned on either side of one of the wingback chairs that sat in front of the mahogany bookshelves that lined the wall, two in front and two behind, and all of them with their hands on their phasers and their eyes on the man seated in the chair between them.

 

He was an unknown; she knew that instantly.  She rarely forgot a face, but even if she were inclined to, she knew for certain that she would never have forgotten this one.

 

He was a handsome man; astoundingly so, with his black hair, pale blue eyes, chiseled cheekbones and almost criminally sensuous mouth.  His face was a trifle long, his nose just a smidge too large for his face, but really, those small imperfections only made him _more_ attractive.  He sat in the chair like a King on a throne, head up, spine straight, arms along the armrests and feet flat on the floor in front of him.  He wore the same unrelenting black that they all did down here—the same pants and tunic and boots—but he did it with such careless ease that he made it look almost sinfully good.

 

And as soon as her eyes met his, she realized how right she’d been.  Sinful was _exactly_ the right word for him.

 

When the full force of that cut-glass gaze met hers, it took every shred of training she possessed not to take a step backwards.  Assessing, calculating and utterly, utterly cold—the creature looking out from behind that perfect exterior was a force to be reckoned with.  This man, whoever he was, was a predator, and the way he was looking at her right that moment left her feeling like nothing so much as sighted prey.

 

It was not a feeling she relished, especially not when she was injured enough to appear easy pickings.  And so, despite her various injuries, she met that wolfish look head on, chin coming up and shoulders squaring as she stood her ground.

 

From the way his eyes narrowed just the tiniest bit, she suspected that he was unimpressed by the display.  So she lifted her chin a little higher and refused—utterly and completely _refused_ —to back down.  She’d just completed the mission of a lifetime—successfully, if not as flawlessly as she would have liked.  She’d be damned if she was going to be cowed by this man or anyone. 

 

She wore her audacity boldly, proudly; refusing to budge even a little bit from her head on perusal of him.  His expression never changed, though she thought she detected the faintest hint of a brow quirk.  Whether that meant she’d annoyed him further or had managed to impress him even a little bit, she had no idea.

 

Marcus walked half way down the room before turning back toward her.  “Lieutenant Duval, this is Commander John Harrison,” he swung his gaze toward the man in the chair.  “Harrison, meet your new keeper…Lieutenant Rebecca Duval.”

 

Those blue eyes, which had shifted to Marcus when he began to speak, were back on her again and she could feel the weight of his gaze like a living thing as it scrutinized her once more.  “If this is a jest, Admiral, I fail to see the humor in it.”

 

His voice was staggering—potent like she hadn’t known a voice could be; it fell from his lips and into the room like slow-pouring honey, rich and dark.  But just as with the rest of him, that outward perfection masked something far more dangerous; a sharply honed blade hidden just beneath a flawless surface.  She had little trouble envisioning the damage that voice could do; could easily imagine those low, sonorous tones turning vicious and gutting as efficiently as any knife.

 

This man—this Commander John Harrison—was quite possibly the most dangerous creature she’d ever encountered.   And while she still didn’t know the full extent of her purpose here, she knew that it would be worth it, whatever it was.  If nothing else, he was sure to be a challenge.  And there were few things she relished more than a good challenge.

 

Marcus crossed his arms over his chest, facing Harrison now, and sighed deeply.  “Problem, Harrison?”

 

Harrison looked over to Marcus, expression turning glacial.  “Do not, for an instant, mistake my grudging compliance for obedience.  If you truly want my help, you will not insult me by foisting this...wreck upon me.”

 

Duval had to bite the inside of her lip to keep the retort she so desperately wished to give from flying free.  Marcus merely frowned, annoyed but not looking particularly surprised.

 

“This wreck, as you call her, is one of our very best, and…”

 

“…and if that truly is the case,” Harrison cut in, words dripping with contempt, “ then I fear that your Section 31 is so far beyond the possibility of help that even I will be unable to affect any real change.  I expected to be met with inferiority, Admiral, no matter which of your so-called Agents was assigned to me—I did not expect the incompetence to be writ quite so large or quite so colorfully across their very face.”

 

Her temper flared and her spine went stiff with indignation.  “With all due respect, Commander,” she said, her temper lending a sharp edge to her smooth Cajun drawl.  “I’m neither inferior nor incompetent.  I might look the worse for wear, but my mission was successful.”  She lifted her chin, pride carrying her where nerve might not have wandered.  “My missions are always successful.”

 

Harrison’s lips twisted in a sneer, not even attempting to hide his disdain.  “If what I see before me is your idea of success, Lieutenant Duval, then I somehow doubt you understand the meaning of the word.”


	2. Chapter 2

**somewhere i have never travelled**

**Alethnya**

 

 

_nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals_

_the power of your intense fragility:whose texture_

_compels me with the color of its countries,_

_rendering death and forever with each breathing_

_-ee cummings_

 

____________________________________________________________________________________

**Disclaimer:  I own nothing.**

**____________________________________________________________________________________**

 

**Chapter Two**

 

Rebecca Duval had grown up very differently than most of her Starfleet contemporaries.  Most of them hailed from vast, sprawling cities where the only green spaces were intricately planned and impeccably groomed and as far removed from any actual nature as it was possible to get.  She, on the other hand, had grown up in middle-of-nowhere Louisiana, surrounded by swamps and bayous and about as much nature as it was possible to find in the glass and metal wonderland that the world had become.  She’d spent the bulk of her childhood with muddy feet, skinned knees and filthy hands; hair never failing to wind up a mangled mess no matter how neatly plaited it began the day. 

 

She remembered one time, in particular, when she’d been no more than eight or nine years old—she’d been out by the fence that marked the boundary of her families land (such as it was; four acres wasn’t exactly an estate, but it was enough to keep her busy from sunup to sundown during school breaks).  She had come upon a young coyote tangled in the archaic barbed wire that her grandfather had insisted on using until the day he died.

 

And oh, it really hadn’t been happy about it.  She remembered it vividly—how it had howled and snapped and snarled at her, how those pitiless black eyes had glared at her, promising retribution; _daring_ her to come closer.  She’d felt sorry for it and though she’d known it was about the stupidest thing she could’ve done, she’d tried to help it anyway.

 

It had been a very long, very bloody walk home after that, followed by a trip to the hospital where the various bites and scratches she’d received in return for her ill-considered act of kindness had to be thoroughly cleaned and treated.  To top it all off, she’d had to get four different inoculations on the off chance that the thing had been carrying any diseases.  Upon returning home that evening, she’d seen her grandfather walking back toward the house from the woods with his old shotgun propped on his shoulder and she hadn’t needed to ask to know exactly where he’d been and what he’d done.

 

She’d cried herself to sleep that night, feeling so horribly _responsible_ that it made her sick to her stomach.

 

And now, as she stood there, facing down the every bit as pitiless glare of Commander John Harrison, listening to him snarl and snap at her, she found herself suddenly and all too vividly reminded of that trapped, vicious and thoroughly pissed off coyote once more.

 

Commander Harrison wasn’t exactly skinny, four-legged and stuck in a fence, but he was just as cornered and just as dangerous…but she’d be damned if he got any help from her.  She was older now, wiser; less altruistic—in the same situation now, she’d just shoot the damn thing straight out and save herself the trouble. 

 

_“If what I see before me is your idea of success, Lieutenant Duval, then I somehow doubt you understand the meaning of the word.”_

Yeah…Harrison was goddamned lucky that she wasn’t armed.

 

She still wasn’t exactly certain what the Admiral’s play here was, but as he wasn’t stepping in, she assumed she had leave to respond.  He knew better than to think she wouldn’t return the Commander’s vitriol in kind—especially when it was actually her that was being attacked.  Which, honestly, was sort of…invigorating.

 

In her line of work, it was always about being somebody else; somebody different.  But at that moment, she wasn’t anything except herself—plain ol’ Rebecca Duval.  It was a rare thing in her world.

 

She decided she might as well enjoy it while it lasted.

 

“You know, you might just be right, Commander.”  She easily slipped out from beneath the yoke of her Starfleet self; rolling up her metaphorical sleeves and letting the rough-and-ready redneck girl that still lived underneath the professional polish come out and play.  “Maybe it’s high time I got myself a new dictionary.  Although you might wanna look into one for yourself—because if all of this,” she gestured toward the guards surrounding him, “is _your_ idea of success, then I reckon you don’t have a whole lotta room to talk.”

 

One raven black brow arched high on his forehead, condescension just _oozing_ from him.  “And you believe you have even the slightest grasp of what _all of this_ is, Lieutenant?”

 

“Not especially,” she acknowledged with a shrug, “but I believe I know what a prisoner looks like when I see one, Commander.  That gives me all the grasp of this particular situation that I need at present.”

 

“Then you are not only woefully inept but appallingly naïve as well.  I wonder, Lieutenant, is this stunning combination the result of institutionalized incompetence or merely your own natural tendency toward ineptitude?”  He smiled at her then, a razor blade grin.  “I know I have my suspicions on which is more likely.”

 

Duval cocked her head to the side, expression bland.  “Y’know, you can use all the fancy words in the world to pretty it up, Commader, but really your entire argument boils down to ‘because you’re a stupidhead and I don’t like you’.  Next thing I know you’ll be yanking on my hair and throwing spitballs at the back of my head.”

 

Just that quickly, any hint of smugness vanished, and he looked—to borrow a phrase from her long-deceased bastard of a grandfather—like to spit nails.  “Dismiss me at your peril, Lieutenant.  I am not a child, to be put in my place.  Nor am I a man to be trifled with.  I am _more_ than you could ever comprehend; more than you could even begin to imagine.  I am...”

 

“What you are, Commander,” Duval interrupted, not even attempting to hide her amusement, “is one foot stomp away from a full on temper tantrum.”

 

He growled at that—a real, honest animal sound that sent a shiver down her spine and set the hair at the back of her neck on end.  His eyes blazed electric blue and he launched himself to his feet, fists clenched at his side and expression an open flame of fury—and she knew that _this_ was the real Commander John Harrison, the man who had been hiding under all that glacial cold. 

 

She’d been convinced that he was dangerous, but he was right—he was _more_.  He wasn’t just dangerous…he was _deadly_.

 

And he was looking at her as if he wanted nothing more than to squash her under his boot like the drooling insect he so vocally believed her to be.  It was testament to the visceral potency of his anger that even the four phasers now trained unerringly on him did nothing to ease her discomfort—mostly because he didn’t even glance at them; paid them absolutely no mind whatsoever.

 

Duval, running on sheer stubbornness, refused— _refused_ —to show how very much she wanted to retreat, to put something other than five feet of open space between them.  Luckily, she had plenty of experience with terrifying situations and so she dug deep, shoved the fear down deep inside, squared her shoulders and kept her eyes locked on his. 

 

“Harrison!”

 

The Admiral’s voice was sharp, turning the word into a clear warning.  Not that it appeared to do much good; the Commander was still looking at her like he was going to snap her neck and very much enjoy doing it.

 

“All of them, Harrison,” the Admiral barked out, annoyed.

 

This clearly meant something more to the Commander than it did to her.  His gaze broke from hers and snapped to the Admiral and she watched the muscle along his jaw tick as he ground his teeth together.

 

The Admiral took a long, slow step toward him.  “Every.  Single.  One.”

 

For a long moment, they just glared at one another and the entire room seemed to hold its breath as they waited to see who would crack first.

 

A moment later, they found out.  And in truly spectacular fashion.

 

Commander Harrison let out another growl, whipped around and let fly a brutal kick,  booted foot connecting so hard with the chair he had been sitting in that it flew backwards and slammed into the shelves behind it and everything—chair, shelves, books—just…exploded, if such a thing were even possible.  As bits of wood and paper and fabric fluttered down around him—and while everyone else in the room stared on, utterly frozen—Commander Harrison threw back his head and just _roared_.

 

It was a sound like nothing she had ever heard before; a sound that was rage and pain and so raw with both that it very nearly brought tears to her eyes.

 

It brought her right back to that coyote trapped in the fence again.  The Admiral didn’t have a shotgun, but it appeared he hadn’t needed one; those words had been weapons and he’d used them accordingly.

 

And now, just like then, she felt so horribly… _responsible_.

 

She dropped her eyes to the floor, blinking hard against tears and fighting to regain her composure.  This reaction, whatever it was, would do her absolutely no favors with the Admiral.  He wouldn’t understand and he would see it as the weakness that it very much was.  And no Agent under his command could afford to show weakness; not if they wanted to keep their status within the Section.

 

Luckily, the Admiral was too preoccupied at the moment to notice much of anything in regards to her.  Ranting and cursing up a storm at the mess, he ordered Harrison shackled and escorted to the smallest of the three interrogation rooms that sat just down the hall from his office.  Duval glanced up despite herself, curious to see how the Commander would take that on top of everything else.

 

When he just stood there and allowed it, allowed the shackles to be locked onto his wrists and the four security goons to manhandle him not at all gently toward the door, she frowned, confused by the quiet acceptance that was so at odds with what had just happened.  As they approached the door, the Commander looked up and their eyes met once again.

 

The rage was still there, still burning bright.  But it was the pain woven in and around the rage caught at her; that drew her in and spoke directly to the sympathetic soul that she’d never quite managed to dismantle despite her best efforts.  Compassion welled up in side of her—anything that could leave such a man so completely undone had to be truly terrible—as well as healthy doses of regret and confusion.

 

He returned her look steadily and their eyes remained locked together until he was yanked out of the office and the door slammed shut behind him.


	3. Chapter 3

**somewhere i have never travelled**

**Alethnya**

 

 

_nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals_

_the power of your intense fragility:whose texture_

_compels me with the color of its countries,_

_rendering death and forever with each breathing_

_-ee cummings_

 

____________________________________________________________________________________

**Disclaimer:  I own nothing.**

**____________________________________________________________________________________**

 

Half an hour and a whole lot of clean up later, she was once again facing Admiral Marcus across his habitually messy desk, composure fully restored and all that inconvenient compassion locked up tight once more.  It annoyed her that she’d cracked so easily and she decided the best course of action was to chalk it up to the painkillers and move on.

 

The saving grace in all this was the fact that, in all the commotion, the Admiral hadn’t noticed a thing.  That she was still sitting there was testament to that.

 

“So,” the Admiral leaned back in his chair, once again leveling that assessing look of his at her face.  “Commander John Harrison.  Thoughts, Lieutenant?”

 

She wanted to laugh.  Loudly.  Instead, she quirked a brow and shook her head.  “Frankly, sir, so many that I don’t know where to start.”

 

Marcus let out a soft snort of laughter at that.  “I can well believe that, Duval.  And since time is of the essence, I’ll save you the effort of figuring it out.” 

 

He reached out and slid a hard copy folder across the desk to her.  It may not have said ‘burn after reading’, but she had been in the game long enough to know that any information handed to her in print rather than on a PADD was information that was expected to go no further than her own eyes.  She swiped it off the desk with her good arm and settled it in her lap.  Opening it, she was immediately greeted with a very old piece of paper, crumbling at the edges.  A torn out page from a book, she decided almost immediately, fingering the ragged inside edge.  There was a photograph at the top of the page and writing beneath—Hindi, she suspected, though couldn’t be absolutely certain.

 

And then she took a good look at the picture.

 

A man stood centered in the foreground of a very large room with massive windows and arching ceilings—a palace of some kind, if the gilded throne that stood just behind the subject was any indication.  As for the man himself, he was tall, imposing in a high-collared crimson and gold coat that fell to just past his knees and a pair of crimson pants that fit tightly around his ankles.  His feet were bare and his arms were crossed and his hair was a rakish mop of coal black curls that fell over his forehead and around his ears. 

 

None of it was familiar, except for the eyes that stared out from beneath the untamed curls.

 

She would know those eyes anywhere.

 

The man staring up at her from that photograph—challenging any and all who looked at him—was Commander John Harrison.

 

But the caption beneath the picture bore another name entirely; a name that leapt up from the depths of her memory as a droning snippet from one of the history courses she’d been required to take at the Academy.

 

_Samraat Khan Noonien Singh._

Her head snapped up, eyes meeting the Admirals.  “Explain, please, sir.”

 

“You’re looking at a page from a late twentieth century primary school textbook.  At that time, the man you see there, Khan Noonien Singh, ruled approximately a quarter of the planet, centralized in Eastern and Central Asia…”

 

“I know the history,” she cut in, skirting the thin line between succinct and insolent, “what I want to know, sir, is how a three hundred year old dictator is currently sitting in an interrogation room just down the hall.”

 

If the Admiral was bothered by her abruptness, he didn’t show it.  Rather, he smiled, almost…fondly.  “He is spry for a man his age, isn’t he?”

 

“He damn near back kicked a chair through a concrete wall, sir.  I don’t really think spry is the word for it.”

 

The Admiral’s lips thinned as he glanced behind her.  “So he did.  You say you know the history, so I assume you know how he managed that little feat of strength?”

 

Duval dug deep into her internal files, sorting and finding the appropriate memories.  “Genetically engineered super-human,” she recited.  “Enhanced strength, speed and intelligence.”

 

“Very good, Duval.  He is all those things and a great deal more.”

 

Shifting impatiently in her seat, she nodded sharply.  “Yes, yes.  It’s very impressive, sir.  But I’m really more interested in how he’s _here_ and not several hundred years dead.”

 

This time, her impatience earned her a frown.  But as it also paved the way— _finally_ —for the information she really wanted so she didn’t feel the least bit sorry for it.  “Three weeks ago, one of our scouting ships en route to Starbase 12 encountered a derelict ship drifting along the outskirts of the Gamma 400 system.  Upon boarding, it was discovered to be a late twentieth century sleeper ship…”

 

“The Botany Bay,” Duval interrupted.  “So the stories were true.”

 

Marcus gave a slight shrug.  “In a way, yes—though greatly exaggerated.  We found one soul aboard—Khan himself, tucked away in a cryotube where he’d spent the past three centuries napping.  Within a week, we had him awake and over the past two we’ve been doing our best to help him deal with this whole new world he’s been thrust into.  That sort of thing can put even the strongest man in a delicate mental state.”

 

He was trying to sound genuinely concerned for the other man, but failing miserably.  She briefly toyed with the idea of telling him how horrible a liar he actually was—even the Admiral’s tells had tells, for God’s sake—but dismissed the thought almost immediately.  It didn’t matter if she knew he couldn’t give a rat’s hairy little ass about Khan’s mental state.  What mattered were the facts sprinkled on top of the fake solicitude.

 

“To what purpose, sir?”

 

The Admiral went very still.  His eyes had gone cold again, assessing her, cataloguing her.  “Excuse me?”

 

Duval suppressed the urge to sigh.  “Clearly you intend to utilize him in some capacity, sir.  I was just wondering what you had in mind.”

 

“Wep dev,” the Admiral barked out after a moment’s consideration.  “Well, really R&D in general, but specifically on wep dev.  He’s a genius like we’ve never seen and he ruled a quarter of the world quite happily for a number of years.  That big old brain of his is going to come in very handy against the demons in the darkness, Duval—very handy, indeed.”

 

It made sense, after a fashion.  A very vocal part of her was fairly screaming inside that it sounded like a _very bad idea_ to even attempt to leash a man with those kinds of credentials.  But then a larger and more decisive part of her brain told the rest to shut up because it wasn’t her job to question the plan.

 

Speaking of her job…

 

“And my part in this, sir?”

 

“I told you earlier—before your little pissing contest—you’re his new keeper.  At this point, I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him, so I need to have eyes on what he’s doing all the time.  Watch him.  Make sure he’s doing what he’s supposed to be doing.  Keep him focused.  Get _close_ to him.  Be his friend, his confidant, his… _whatever_.  I want his loyalty secured, Duval.  Khan is a bona fide military genius and I refuse to allow this opportunity to just up and run away.  Your job is to do anything and everything in your power to make sure that doesn’t happen.  And I do mean _anything_ and _everything_.”

 

Duval’s stomach gave a sideways lurch at the blatant subtext in the Admiral’s words, the picture he was painting with such careful strokes becoming ever clearer.  “All due respect, sir…are you’re suggesting,” she paused, frowning deeply, “it almost sounds like you mean for me to…to… _seduce_ him.”

 

The Admiral didn’t even blink.  “Needs must, Lieutenant.  I imagine that would go a long way toward achieving the results I’m expecting.  And believe me when I say, I’m expecting a great deal.”

 

A serpentine wisp of panic coiled around and up her spine.  “Admiral Marcus…sir…I don’t think…” she stopped, giving an almost helpless shrug and shake of her head.  “That’s not really my area of expertise, sir.”

 

“Then figure something else out.  Ultimately, I don’t care how you do it, but I want you to get close to him.  I want him to trust you.  However you chose to make that happen is entirely up to you.  The point is I want him leashed even tighter than he is now.  I’m not stupid enough to think I’ve actually got him under control; not at this point.”

 

That brought up a very interesting question and she chose to shelve everything else for the time being—arguing with the Admiral would get her nowhere fast.  “What do we have on him anyway?”

 

“What?”

 

She leaned forward slightly, eyes narrowed, considering.  “Clearly we have something on him—something big.  Something that’s making him, as he put it, grudgingly compliant.  What is it?”

 

“Not your concern, Lieutenant.”

 

She’d figured as much, but it had been worth asking.  “Aye, sir.”

 

“Anything else?”

 

This was, without question, the most nebulous assignment she’d ever been given; she was used to broad mission parameters, but this was bordering on the ridiculous.  However, the folder in her lap was thick with further information; details, she assumed, on the man in question and full scope of the operation.  She would peruse it later, at her leisure, before destroying it and hope that it was enough.  It was evident that the Admiral himself was prepared to offer nothing more, so she was just going to have to make do.  “No, sir.  Not at present.”

 

“Good,” the Admiral clapped his hands together, clearly pleased to be done with the conversation.  “On to the next step, then.”

 

“Which is?”

 

“Relocation.  No way in hell I’m keeping Harrison planet-side—too many potential risks here.  Your transport to the Io Facility is scheduled to leave at 2300 tonight.”

 

Duval sighed inwardly.  She hadn’t even properly unpacked from her last mission yet—which, she supposed, was handy, all things considered.  “This is a long term arrangement, I assume, sir.”

 

Marcus nodded.  “Indefinite, as a matter of fact.”

 

“I’ll need to collect my things…”

 

The Admiral waved a negligent hand at that.  “No need.  I’ve got two agents clearing out your apartment as we speak.  They’ll bring all your personal effects back with them.”

 

Duval stiffened.  “I don’t much care for other people pawing through my things, Admiral.”

 

“Too bad, Lieutenant.  I’ve got other plans for you.”

 

“Such as?”

 

“As amusing as that little pissing contest between you and Harrison was, it certainly did you no favors with him.  Given the scope of your assignment, you’ll need to amend that and there’s no time quite like the present, is there?”

 

That had been a just a little too gleeful—for whatever reason, the Admiral was well pleased with how that first meeting had gone, regardless of what he was saying now.  “If I had known the particulars of the situation beforehand, sir, I assure you that I would have handled it differently.  As it is, I’m confident that the desired outcome was achieved,” she glanced over her shoulder meaningfully, “although there might’ve been a bit more drama than intended.”

 

The look Marcus gave her at that was bland.  “An impressive understatement, Duval.”

 

“Thank you, sir,” she dipped her head, short and sharp, “it’s a gift.  But now, I need a few minutes to myself, if you don’t mind, sir.  You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

 

The Admiral grinned a toothy grin.  “Nothing you can’t handle, Lieutenant.  I’m banking on that.”

 

His faith should have been touching.  Instead, it settled like a lead weight on her shoulders.

 

She’d thought her last mission would be the one to make her; cement her position and guarantee her a long and illustrious future with the Section.  But now she knew, it had only been one more step up.

 

This assignment…this was really it.  And she was almost positive that if it _didn’t_ make her, it would most certainly break her.

 

                                                ***

An hour and two very strong cups of horrible coffee later, Duval stood with her back against the wall just opposite the door of Interrogation 3.  She’d read through the file the Admiral had given her, as complete a dossier on Khan Noonien Singh as known history would allow.  And then she’d set to thinking.  She’d mulled over every detail, considered about twenty different angles, and ultimately, the only decisive conclusion she’d come to was that she really, _really_ didn’t like this plan. 

 

Not one little bit.

 

Not only did she still think the _entire_ undertaking, start to finish, was a ticking time bomb of potential awfulness—an opinion that had only solidified further with every word she’d read about him—but the part of it that was specific to her…

 

It was ridiculous.  Utterly.

 

She’d always believed Admiral Marcus to be the brains behind the Section…but if this was any indication, she was going to have to amend that.  Anyone who would cast her in the role of temptress wasn’t just dumb, they were delusional.

 

Yes, she was good at what she did, and therein laid the problem— _that_ wasn’t what she did.

 

She didn’t orchestrate elaborate seduction scenarios.  She didn’t know all the things to say and do to turn a perfectly sensible man into a panting, aching puppet.  It simply wasn’t a skill set that she possessed, be it in in her private life or her professional one—the only time men fell at _her_ feet was after she’d shot them.  If infiltrating Khan’s bedroom was the primary goal of this operation, she rather wondered at his assigning her in the first place—especially as there was a small, but elite group of female operatives who were specifically trained for exactly this sort of mission.

 

Female operatives who wore their femininity like a silken negligee; who could conquer a man with a look.

 

She tended to wear her femininity like a baggy sweater.  And the last time she’d tried to smolder at a man, he’d asked her if she was feeling all right before removing himself to the opposite end of the bar.

 

Meanwhile, Khan Noonien Singh’s _harem_ had—according to the literature—been so large that he’d been ensured of a different companion for every night of the year.

 

Every.  Night.

 

She didn’t have a chance in hell of competing with that.  Not now, not ever.

 

Thankfully, despite his blatant endorsement of her using old fashioned feminine wiles on her new charge, the Admiral _had_ given her an out.  He’d said he didn’t care how it was done, so he couldn’t be angry when she did it her own way.

 

But she still had no idea what her own way was going to entail.  To get there, she needed more information.  And the only way she was going to get more information was through further exposure to the subject.  After how badly things had gone the first time they’d been in a room together, she knew that she was going to have to pull out the big guns the second time around.

 

Admiral Marcus was probably going to be more than a little angry when he found out what she was about to do—but it was a calculated risk and one that she knew she had to take if she had any hope of succeeding.  She needed to surprise Khan; to unsettle him.  He would be prepared for a story; a carefully crafted and utterly bullshit story that he would see right through.  He was far too intelligent and far too experienced for anything else.

 

So it was simple really.  She was going to walk in there, sit herself down and give him the very last thing he would ever have expected to get from her or anyone else associated with Section 31.

 

She was going to tell him the truth.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**somewhere i have never travelled**

**Alethnya**

 

 

_nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals_

_the power of your intense fragility:whose texture_

_compels me with the color of its countries,_

_rendering death and forever with each breathing_

_-ee cummings_

 

____________________________________________________________________________________

**Disclaimer:  I own nothing.**

**________________________________________________________________________________**

 

**Chapter 4**

 

When she stepped through the door of Interrogation 3, Duval was coolly composed, all of her misgivings filed away inside her mind to be dealt with later.  She paused just inside the room, the hiss of the door closing behind her falling loud into the silence.  The security detail was present; the four blank-faced men stood in a half circle around their charge, who was seated in a plain steel chair on the far side of the table that dominated the small, white-walled room.

 

Her eyes skipped over Khan for the time being, focusing back on the guards.  “Out,” she said without preamble, looking from one to the next in turn.  “I want the room.”

 

One of them—the senior of the team, she assumed—broke focus, brows dipping in a frown.  “We have orders…”

 

“Which I’m countermanding,” Duval cut in, all her considerable resolution directed entirely on the self-appointed spokesman.  “So get out.”

 

“This is against protocol, Lieutenant.”

 

Duval arched a brow at him, unimpressed and showing it.  “And if I was subject to your protocols that might mean something to me.  But I’m not, so it doesn’t.”  She stepped to the side, activating the manual control on the door so that it hissed open again.  “Now follow directions like the good little grunts that you are and get the hell out of my interrogation room.”

 

Still no one moved, though they were all now exchanging looks of uncertainty. 

 

Duval sighed deeply.  Shifting the folder from her right hand to her injured left hand, she reached behind her back and under her shirt, drawing her phaser from its holster.  She leveled it on the man who fancied himself in charge, her expression dark and full of ruthless promise.  “I need to speak to the Commander privately.  So either you walk out this door now or I will knock every single one of your uncooperative asses out cold.”

 

The head goon, smart enough to recognize that it was no idle threat, glared at her even as he motioned for his fellows to move out and followed behind them as they all followed his direction.  He paused just at the edge of the door, turning to give Duval a withering look.  “I’m going straight to Admiral Marcus about this.”

 

Duval, arm lowered but weapon still in hand, just smiled.  “Oh, by all means,” she encouraged.  “But before you do, allow me to point out that I have a very long memory, questionable morals and the proven ability to make men much more dangerous than yourself disappear without a trace.  If I were you, I’d think twice about giving me a reason to hold a grudge.”

 

Security peon number one stared down at her for another long moment before his shoulders dropped and he gave a short, sharp nod before hurrying out the door with his bravado tucked between his legs.  Duval re-holstered her weapon and then activated the door once again, punching in the override code that would keep any unwanted visitors out, just in case tall, blonde and nameless was dumber than he looked.  With that done, she turned around to face the remaining occupant of the room.

 

And he was looking right at her, pale blue eyes studying her intently and expression utterly inscrutable.

 

Squaring her metaphorical shoulders—her physical ones were already straight and proud—she limped across the room, pulled out the chair on the opposite side of the table and eased herself into it as gracefully as she could with her regrettably limited range of motion.  Head coming up, she met his gaze head on and without even a hiccup of hesitation.

 

_Best to start slowly,_ she decided.

 

“First things first,” she said, voice as controlled as the rest of her, “I owe you an apology.”

 

His reaction was almost non-existent, and if she hadn’t been watching him as close as she was, she never would have seen it—but his left eyebrow had definitely twitched.  A tell?

 

“Do you?”

 

She inclined her head ever so slightly.  “I took my cues from the Admiral without realizing his intentions.  If I’d known that his whole purpose in orchestrating that meeting was to tweak your nose, I wouldn’t have played along.  That’s not my style.”

 

“Is it not?”

 

If this was going to work at all, she was going to need more from him than monosyllables.  She mentally rolled up her sleeves.

 

“You were right, you know—I didn’t have enough facts to properly grasp the situation and it was irresponsible of me to assume that I did.”

 

His chin came up, eyes narrowing as a now familiar sneer curled his lips.  “But you do _now,_ yes?  Your blindness has been swept away and suddenly, miraculously you can see the _truth_ of me.  I daresay you would go so far as to say that you even _understand_ me.  Tell me, Lieutenant, have I the right of it or have I missed a line or two?”

 

There; much better. 

 

“I don’t appreciate you putting words in my mouth.”

 

“And yet you allow the inestimable Admiral Marcus to pen the fiction of your very existence.”  He shook his head, feigning disappointment.  “Tell me, Lieutenant Rebecca Duval, can you even recognize the lies as they trip off your tongue anymore?  Or have you become so infected by their poison that you actually believe them?”

 

She had been so right to go her own way—he’d been anticipating the Admiral’s game down to the smallest detail.  Leaning back in her chair, she offered up a self-deprecating grin and shrugged one shoulder negligently.

 

“For what it’s worth, I’ve told you nothing but the truth since I walked in this room.”

 

He let out a harsh bark of laughter, arms rising from his lap to rest on the table in front of him, palms flat against the cold, steel surface.  He leaned forward slightly, eyes blazing fire-bright.  “Oh but that _was_ good—earthy and earnest and sweet; a calculated response designed to wring sympathy from even the hardest of hearts and were I a different man, it may even have worked.  But I am not a different man and I can see through your lies; through _you_ , straight to the heart of you.  And I know exactly what you truly are…”  He paused, chin coming up as he regarded her down the length of his nose, haughty now.  “You are a tool, Lieutenant Duval—a blunt object wielded clumsily by lesser beings playing at power.”

 

It was amazing how easy it was _not_ to rise to the bait now that she knew the particulars of the man wielding the hook.  “Really?  I’m as bad as all that?”

 

“You are worse even still.  Tool, instrument, puppet, pawn—I could go on and on but I fear I would run out of adjectives long before I ran out of disdain.”  He leaned even farther across the table, the warm, rolling baritone of his voice providing a discordant counterpoint to the viciousness in his eyes.  “You believe you are impressive and clever because your master has _told_ you that you are impressive and clever.  He has painted you a lioness and you sit here before me convinced it is the truth while you mouth your practiced lines and smile your scripted smiles and all the while your meager mind lacks the self-awareness to recognize that you are nothing more than a dancing monkey, waltzing to his tune.”

 

Well.  He certainly didn’t pull his punches. 

 

Duval watched him through narrowed eyes, wanting nothing more than to wipe that smug satisfaction off his ridiculously handsome face.  Despite that and beneath the annoyance that pricked at her, vindication wound its way into and around her, and it was sweet.  She really had been _so_ very right—The Admiral’s plan would have been a burning, utterly unsalvageable wreck after that wicked diatribe—the venomously brilliant man sitting across from her would never have given her even a modicum of trust had she played the falsely-sympathetic friendly she’d been intended to.

 

“Moved as I am by your insights into my character,” she said at length, once she’d mastered the desire to tell him what he could do with himself, and if her annoyance bled through into her voice, she thought she could be forgiven just this once, “there are several very important things that I need to discuss with you.  So if you’re done belittling my existence, do you think maybe we could move on to more pressing matters?”

 

“By all means,” he leaned back in his seat, haughty and too satisfied by half, and invited her to continue with an elegant unfurling of wrist and fingers.

 

She lifted the folder from her lap and held it up in front of her.

 

“I was handed this with strict orders that it was for my eyes only and that it was to be destroyed after reading.”  She set it down on the table in front of her.  “It contains every scrap of information available on you.”

 

He snorted out a bitter laugh.  “Does it indeed?  I do so hope that Commander John Harrison proved an entertaining read, Lieutenant.”

 

“Oh, it was riveting stuff, I assure you,” she tapped the folder twice with the tip of her finger.  “You’re a fascinating case.”

 

He smiled back, the same wolf grin he’d turned on her once before.  “I assure _you_ , Lieutenant…you really have no idea.”

 

Kill shot time. 

 

_Ready…_

 

“Despite what you think, I’m not really the stay on script type.  And I’m getting ready to break just about every rule in the book,” she said as she flattened her palm against the folder, choosing her words with care, “because I believe that Admiral Marcus is handling you and this whole situation entirely the wrong way.”

 

If that eyebrow twitch meant what she was starting to believe that it did, she was doing this exactly right. 

 

_Aim…_

“As you so graciously guessed, I was very specifically directed on how to interact with you.  I’m supposed to tell you that I’ve been assigned to you as a handler—that it’s my job to make sure you do everything that the Admiral requires you to do.  And, to a certain extent, that’s actually the truth.  However, it’s only part of the story.  While I’m making sure you jump through Marcus’ hoops, I’m also supposed to learn you.  To earn your trust and to be anything that I need to be in order to—in the Admiral’s words—secure your loyalty.  He even went so far as to suggest that I should seduce you.”

 

Again, that short, sharp bark of laughter.

 

She wasn’t going to lie—that stung a bit, and Duval looked down before he could see that it did and brushed a few imaginary crumbs from the front flap of the folder.

 

“But I’m not going to do any of that.”

 

She definitely had his attention now; she could almost hear that big, designed-for-perfection brain of his churning. 

 

Lifting her eyes back to his, she very deliberately slid the folder across the table to him and he immediately snapped out a hand to take possession of it, flipping it open before she’d even finished pulling her empty fist back to her side of the table.  The picture she’d studied so closely lay immediately on top and she could see the moment his eyes found it—his face went blank and his entire body went tense.

 

_Fire…_

“I have no doubt that the Admiral’s plan would have worked like a charm on Commander John Harrison.  But I doubt very much that it’s got a chance in hell of getting me anywhere with the Tyrant of Asia.”

 

He threw his head back and the look he gave her set her teeth on edge as every ounce of that fierce focus was centered entirely upon her; she’d seen fire in his eyes before, but this…this was an inferno.

 

“You know who I am.”

 

 

_Bullseye._

 

If it was possible, his voice had gone deeper than she’d yet heard it and there was a roughness to it that she could feel up and down the length of her spine like tiny, tingling pinpricks.  Somehow, she done it—she’d actually done what she set out to do and he hadn’t seen it coming.  But…she couldn’t be too proud of herself.  She couldn’t help but feel the tiniest bit discomfited by the look on his face, that same wretched rawness that he’d worn as they’d escorted him from Marcus’ office.

 

Her soft-streak really did have horribly inconvenient timing.

 

Brushing it off as she’d done plenty of times in the past, she nevertheless sought to sound as genuine as she possibly could—an easy task for once; because for once, she actually meant it.  “I know who you are… _Khan.”_

 

 At the sound of his name, he went utterly still, though his eyes continued to blaze.  “You know _what_ I am.”

 

The air in the room had changed suddenly, the entire atmosphere going thick and tense with anticipation.  For the first time since she’d walked into the room, unease began to twist itself into several very large knots in her stomach.

 

“I do.”

 

“The Admiral has told you _everything_ then.”

 

He was watching her far more closely than he had before, constantly shifting eyes following every slight shift, every breath.  There was a coolness to those words that felt very at odds with the heat of everything he’s said before; a deliberation to his expression that sent a jolt of unease through her stomach. 

 

And suddenly, she knew that this answer was the most important one of all.  He was almost rigid with tension, waiting for her answer with such focused fury that she felt like she was standing on the edge of a very high cliff.  Worst of all, she had no idea what answer he wanted—no idea what answer would be the right one.

 

_You started this with truth,_ she told herself, and even her internal voice was shaking, _you may as well end it with the same._

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” she said, and there wasn’t even a trace of discomposure in her voice.  “If you mean he handed me that folder, told me to read it and gave me an overview of how they found you, then yes…he told me everything.  But…”

 

“You know how they found me?”

 

She didn’t know how, but she’d gone and made it worse.  For the second time that day, he was looking at her like he wanted to kill her and she had absolutely no idea why.  Hands coming up in front of her in a placating gesture, she shook her head and tried very hard not to start hyperventilating.

 

“The Admiral wasn’t exactly forthcoming with details, but I know your ship was found by a scouting ship and that you were in cryosleep and that…”

 

She left off with a shriek as suddenly, and with all the speed of a striking snake, Khan shot to his feet and literally _threw_ the table between them to the side, the heavy steel slamming into the reinforced walls with a resounding crack.  Instincts kicking in, Duval leapt to her feet, injuries forgotten in the rush of adrenaline.  Before she could move, he was on her, one large hand wrapped tight around her throat, the force of his advance lifting her off her feet and propelling her backwards.

 

Her back hit the wall hard, jarring her already injured ribs and bringing tears to her eyes.  She blinked them away even as she gasped for breath, her good hand coming up to grip the forearm that strained above the hand squeezing her neck just hard enough to make breathing difficult.  “Please,” she gasped, her voice thin and reedy; desperate.  The cool, polished Agent who had begun this exchange with him was gone and in its place was a woman who knew without a doubt that she was in way over her head.  “Please…I don’t understand…”

 

“Oh, but you _are_ well-trained,” his voice was almost a caress, a dark, low rumble in her ear that—despite the circumstances—sent a shudder straight through her.  He was leaning into her, pinning every inch of her to the wall with every inch of him.  His mouth was at her ear, his face pressed against the side of hers, a parody of an embrace.  “I very nearly believe you—I very nearly _want_ to.  You plead so prettily that I could almost forget that you are a professional liar.”

 

Duval stared at the ceiling, tears running down her face despite her best efforts to contain them.  “Yes,” she agreed, fighting to speak.  “But I…haven’t lied…to you.”

 

He chuckled darkly.  “Your dedication to the role is impressive, Lieutenant,” he tightened his grip ever so slightly, “but unwise.  Drop it now and tell me where…they…are.”

 

The last three words had come out as a hiss, each one punctuated by a pointed shake that left her feeling like a ragdoll.  The scariest part of all—she could _feel_ the strength that he wasn’t using; could feel just how much he was holding back.  Remembering the chair, she thought she should be thankful, but couldn’t quite manage it around the gut-churning fear.

 

Distantly, she heard the telltale signs of commotion on the other side of the door.  If it was a rescue in progress, she rather hoped they’d hurry it up a smidge.

 

“I don’t…understand,” she croaked, trying very hard not to panic, to keep him talking and buy herself even a little bit more time.  “I don’t…know…what…”

 

“My crew,” he growled the word directly into her ear.  “I want my crew.  Where are they?”

 

They were banging on the door now, hard.

 

Duval was shaking her head as best she could, denying his words.  “No…crew.  Was just…you…on the ship.”

 

“Liar!”  He roared the word, lifting her away from the wall before slamming her back into it again, only now he was directly in front of her, looming over her, his forehead nearly pressed to hers as he glared down into her wide, terrified eyes.  “Are you truly willing to die to protect Marcus’ grand design?  Because I _will_ kill you, Lieutenant—make no mistake about that.  You will tell me where they are being held or I will keep squeezing until your neck snaps like a twig between my fingers.”

 

“I’m…not…lying!” Duval spat the words with every shred of conviction she could muster.  “I don’t…know where…they are.”

 

She had no choice but to look at him, and so she saw it…the slightest twitch of his left eye.  The hand at her throat loosened ever so slightly.  “Again,” Khan snarled, “say it again!”

 

Sucking air into her lungs, Duval leaned forward until their foreheads actually were touching.  “I don’t know where they are.”  Her voice was a raspy croak and she desperately wanted a drink of water, but she refused to look away from his eyes.  “I’m not lying to you.  I _haven’t_ lied to you.”

 

Khan reared back from her with another foreign curse at the same moment that the door hissed open.

 

They came into the room firing.  Four phaser blasts echoed off the walls and she watched Khan drop, crashing to his knees with a grunt of pain.  His entire security detail was on him in a flash, the four of them tackling him the rest of the way to the floor.

 

She closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall and sucking down slow, steady breaths and trying very hard not to throw up; the adrenaline spiking through her system playing havoc with her stomach now that the immediate threat had passed.  After a long moment, her hearing—which had gone slightly fuzzy—cleared and she realized that someone was yelling.

 

She cracked an eye open, then closed it again.

 

The someone, apparently, was Admiral Marcus.

 

And he wasn’t just yelling in general…he was yelling at _her_.

 

“…hope it was worth it because you are done, Duval.  Done!  You disobeyed direct orders and revealed eyes-only information to a subject and I will have your ass for this!  I’ll bust you so far back you’ll be saluting _ensigns_!  It’s a desk for you from now on, Duval…you’ll be chained to the fucking thing from now until the day you die…”

 

“You will not.”

 

Khan’s voice, strong and deep and vibrating with fury, cut through the Admiral’s tirade like nothing else could have.  Marcus stopped mid-sentence, turning to look down at Khan, who was once again on his knees, hands shackled tightly behind his back.  “Excuse me, _Commander_?”

 

“You heard me well, _Admiral_ ,” he shook off the hands that were attempting to lift him to his feet and pushed himself upright unaided.  “You will not punish her and you certainly will not replace her on this assignment.  Attempt to do so and I will, I promise you, play merry hell with whichever puling, slack-jawed imbecile you offer in recompense.”

 

The Admiral, once a raging tower of righteous fury, deflated slightly, confusion eating away at his anger.  “What the hell are you talking about, Harrison?”

 

Duval, her eyes on Khan, frowned.  What _was_ he talking about?

 

Khan sighed and shot Marcus a look of utter loathing, his shoulders square and his chin high and really, he looked far more impressive than a man in shackles had any right to look.  “Really, Admiral, I find myself continually amazed by the deadly dullness of your dishwater mind.  I will say this once and you will listen and you will act accordingly.  I will work with no Agent save Lieutenant Duval.  Not now—not ever.  Was that clear enough for you, Admiral?”


	5. Chapter 5

  **somewhere i have never travelled**

**Alethnya**

 

 

_nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals_

_the power of your intense fragility:whose texture_

_compels me with the color of its countries,_

_rendering death and forever with each breathing_

_-ee cummings_

 

____________________________________________________________________________________

**Disclaimer:  I own nothing.**

**____________________________________________________________________________________**

 

**Chapter 5**

By the time 2300 rolled around, Duval was feeling about as horrible as she’d ever felt in her entire life—and she wasn’t just talking about the fact that her entire body felt like one, giant, aching bruise.

 

Once Khan had made his declaration that he’d work with no one but her, the Admiral had very quickly had him removed from the room and taken back to the holding cell he’d been calling home for several days past.  The room had felt strangely empty once he’d gone, but Duval had immediately chalked that up to the simple fact that Khan Noonien Singh was the kind of personality that took up every bit of spare space in any room he stepped into.

 

She hadn’t had long to ponder the subject though before Marcus had laid back into her, tearing her up one side, down the other, around the back and through the front.  She’d listened, passively, as he enumerated her offenses in language so colorful that she would normally have found it entertaining.  But her ribs were on fire, her arm throbbed, her head felt like it was about to explode, she could barely swallow through the painful swelling at her throat and all she really, really wanted to do was find a quiet place to curl up and lick her wounds like the thoroughly kicked dog she felt like.

 

When the Admiral had finished with her flaying, storming from the room on the wings of truly self-righteous fury, he’d left his final words ringing in her ears.

 

_I don’t forget and I don’t forgive, Duval.  Remember that._

As if she hadn’t known that before.  As if she hadn’t given a single thought to any of that before doing what she’d done.  Eventually, given enough time and distance, she knew she would be able to make the Admiral see that there had been good, solid sense behind her actions.  Hell, in all honesty, it had worked far better than she’d imagined it would, despite how spectacularly it appeared to have gone wrong.

 

She wasn’t fool enough to think that she’d already gained Khan’s trust—she had a hard time believing that he possessed any to give in the first place.  But she had made so much of the right kind of impression that he was refusing to work with anyone _but_ her—hadn’t that been exactly what the Admiral had wanted when he assigned her to him?

 

Of course, she knew that wasn’t the Admiral’s real issue with what had been passed between them.  He had _not_ wanted her to know about Khan’s crew.  She understood it to a certain extent—Marcus knew her well enough to know that she would disapprove of using people as collateral.  However, if he knew her that well, he should also have been well aware that she was pragmatic enough to understand the necessity behind the action and loyal enough to overlook the moral objections for the sake of the greater good.  Hell, it certainly wasn’t the first time she’d had to set aside her principals for the sake of the work.

 

Hopefully, if she could handle this mission well enough to fight her way back into the Admiral’s good graces, it wouldn’t be the last time either.

 

The rest of the day had been a bit of a blur, though most of it had been spent buried under a thin blanket on a narrow bunk in one of the tiny rooms set aside for Agents who needed a bit of rest while still on the job.  She been woken up just after 2100 by the unapologetically loud arrival of her bags and had drug herself out of bed and spent the remaining time freshening up as best she could.

 

Now, it was 2245 and she was limping through the otherwise deserted Bromley Spaceport toward the gate where the ship that would take them to the Io Facility was waiting.  And just in front of the door that would take her onto the ship, Security Goon Number One stood, looking entirely too pleased with himself.

 

Duval stopped in front of him, lips pressed into a line of annoyance.  “Please tell me,” she rasped, “that you aren’t tagging along.”

 

His shit eating grin widened.  “Oh no worries there, Agent Duval—I’m just here to make sure you get on the ship.  After that, you’re on your own with Commander Harrison, just like you wanted.”

 

Well that was interesting.  She’d assumed they would be travelling with a security detail appropriate to the Admiral’s level of distrust for her new charge.  That they weren’t was, she knew, a message meant for her rather than any sudden bloom of confidence in Khan’s cooperation.  She was being thrown to the wolves, so to speak, and it told her loud and clear just how far she had fallen in the Admiral’s eyes.

 

Strangely, she was fine with it.  Her opinion of the Admiral had taken something of a nosedive over the past twelve hours as well so his disapproval didn’t carry nearly the weight that it would have before.  Besides that, there was also the fact that she was now intimately aware of how pointless a security detail would be should Khan decide to renege on whatever deal he had struck with Marcus.  If he truly tried to free himself, she had very little doubt that he would and could do it with very little trouble.

 

Eyeing Security Goon Number One—really, it was as good a nickname as any since she couldn’t be bothered to find out his actual name—she wondered if he had any idea of how lucky he was that Khan hadn’t even tried to fight back.  If she’d felt better, she probably would have thoroughly enjoyed making the point and taking the arrogant little shit down a peg or two.  But she really was feeling about as miserable as she’d ever felt in her entire life so she just huffed out a deep sigh and gave him a bland, unimpressed look.  “Are my bags already on board?”

 

Security Goon Number One nodded, still smiling.  “They were delivered along with Harrison.  You’re all set to take off, Lieutenant.”

 

“Great,” she muttered, starting past him.  “Thanks _so_ much for all your invaluable help.”

 

“My pleasure, Lieutenant,” he called to her retreating back.  “Have a _fantastic_ time out there.”

 

She paused, having heard far more in that simple sentence than the words alone suggested.  She half-turned back toward him, as fake a smile as she could manage curving her lips.  “Oh, I will.  And fuck you too.”

 

Turning back, she started forward with as much dignity as her flagging strength would allow, temper piquing at the cocksure laughter that followed her as she went.  She hoped the prick enjoyed himself now, because if she ever saw him again, she was going to show him just how little a laughing matter she actually was.

 

Now thoroughly pissed off on top of the exhaustion and the hurting like absolute hell, Duval boarded the transport ship, walked right past the crewman waiting to welcome her aboard and headed straight back to the passenger hold.  She’d been aboard this particular ship more than once so she knew her way around.  A small, de-commissioned Federation vessel that had been quietly procured for Section use, it was used primarily to ferry personnel back and forth between Earth and the Io Facility.  It wasn’t a long trip, so the accommodations tended toward Spartan—unpadded seats, heavy belts with old fashioned buckles and very little leg room—but at that point, anything sounded better than staying on her feet.

 

The door to the passenger hold hissed open ahead of her and she limped inside, ignoring the faint fluttering of nerves at what she knew was waiting for her on the other side.

 

And speak of the devil.

 

He stood on the opposite side of the room looking almost exactly as he had in the picture she’d tossed into an incinerator along with the rest of the folder of information Marcus had given her—booted feet shoulder-width apart, arms folded across his chest, head held high; a great, menacing black shadow despite glare of the too-bright overhead lights.

 

Duval knew that she should be uncomfortable; nervous about facing the man who had come very close to killing her with his bare hands.  But she simply…wasn’t.  Not really.  There was that same nervous fluttering she’d felt before she walked into the room, but she knew that had less to do with what had happened in particular and everything to do with who he was in general. 

 

Knowing what she did—knowing what Marcus was using against him—she could forgive him what happened in Interrogation 3.  More than that, she wasn’t sure there was actually anything to forgive him for in the first place.  She doubted she would have reacted any differently were she to find herself in the same situation.

 

So instead of cowering like he’d probably expected her to do, she simply offered him a curt nod before picking the closest seat and easing herself down into it, gritting her teeth against the screaming of her ribs as she did.  She was definitely going to have to pay a visit to medical once they reached Io as apparently getting thrown into a wall hadn’t at all agreed with her very recently knit bones.  She sat for a long moment with her eyes closed, head against the seat, taking slow, shallow breaths and trying to will away the pain for just a little bit longer.  Another few hours and she would have painkillers and a bed and she would take full advantage of both—ridiculous, destined-for-failure mission be damned.

 

“I had forgotten how easily breakable humans are.”

 

Amazingly, that hadn’t sounded half as condescending as she thought it should.  Forcing her eyes open, she met his gaze, unsurprised at being able to read absolutely nothing of what was going on behind that shock of blue.  “Yeah?” she rasped, her voice sounding worse and worse the more tired she got.  “Lucky me to get to serve as the reminder.”

 

He snorted, and _there_ was the derision she’d expected.  “You sound appalling.”

 

She shot him a glare as she carefully slid her arms under the belts in preparation for takeoff.  “And whose fault is that?”

 

He stiffened; back snapping just ever so much straighter.  “I will notapologize.”

 

The words were fierce and staccato.  She would have said defensive as well, but she figured that was just her tiredness talking.  Regardless of _how_ he’d said it, the fact that he’d felt the need to say it at all struck her as just about the funniest thing she’d ever heard.  So she laughed.  A lot. 

 

She laughed loud and long and it hurt like an absolute _bitch_ , but she was so far beyond exhausted that she physically couldn’t stop herself.  “I’m sorry,” she choked out around the almost delirious glee, “but that was just…” she shook her head, swallowed hard and used that fresh pain to contain her inappropriately exuberant mirth.  “That was really funny.”

 

He was looking at her now with a mixture of annoyance and faint but discernible discomfort—not used to dealing with the punch-drunk ramblings of lesser beings, she imagined.  “It was not meant to be _funny,_ ” he spat the word like it had personally offended him—probably had, now that she thought about it.  “It is a truth you would do well to remember if we are to have any hope of playing out this farce with any modicum of success—one does not apologize to the ant beneath their boot and nor shall I apologize to you.”

 

Just that quickly, it wasn’t very funny anymore and Duval’s laughter melted away in the furious heat of his pointed gaze.  Eyes sliding away from his, she focused on getting herself locked in for a moment before trusting herself to respond.

 

“I don’t actually recall asking for an apology,” she ground out as she pulled the safety restraints as tight as she could stand under the circumstances.  She huffed out as deep a breath as she could, suddenly feeling completely drained.  “Look, I know I’m probably reaching for the moon here, but could we possibly just…not do this right now?  We’re going to have more than enough time to be horrible to each other once we reach Io.  But for now, could we maybe just, I don’t know, _play_ nice?”

 

“I am not _nice_.”

 

“No, you’re not, and I have the bruises on my neck to prove it, thank you very much,” she shot back, fighting now to stay awake against the delicious pull of sleep.  “I don’t really mind though,” she was losing the battle, her eyelids drooping despite her best efforts even as she kept on rambling.  “I’m not nice either—not really.  Everyone says so; something about me being a heartless bitch or somesuch…anyway…nevermind.  Doesn’t matter.  But yeah, I’m not nice and you’re not nice and I think we’ll get along just _famously_.”

 

“Will we?”

 

Her eyes had drifted shut and she knew she was officially gone because he sounded amused and she knew that just wasn’t possible.  “Probably not, no.  But that’s ok.  I don’t like liking people.  Complicates things.”  She tilted her head against the seat back and gave up the fight against the sucking tidal wave of exhaustion just as the ships engines whirred to life.  “G’night.”

 

He didn’t say it back.  She wasn’t surprised.

 


	6. Chapter 6

  **Somewhere I Have Never Travelled**

**Alethnya**

 

 

_nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals_

_the power of your intense fragility:whose texture_

_compels me with the color of its countries,_

_rendering death and forever with each breathing_

_-ee cummings_

 

____________________________________________________________________________________

**Disclaimer:  I own nothing.**

**_________________________________________________________________________________**

 

**Chapter 6**

_Io Facility_

Being who and what she was, waking up had never been a particularly arduous process for Duval.  On the contrary, if one were to judge that sort of thing, she was actually really, really good at it.  She could go from deep sleep to full awake in an instant, a switch that she could flick with unthinking ease. 

 

So this…this was different.

 

Never before in her entire life had waking up been this difficult.  Consciousness hovered just out of reach but she fought for it, struggling to break through the thick, sucking fog that shrouded her brain.  Distantly, she knew that this was not, in any way, normal—that there was more to this than her having simply been exhausted.

 

Eventually— _finally_ —she managed to peel her eyes open and pull herself mostly upright, back propped firmly against the plain, steel headboard of the narrow bed.  She brought her hands up and scrubbed them over her face even as her lips parted in a jaw-cracking yawn.  Then her hands slid up, over her forehead and into her hair, pushing the rat’s nest it had become up and off of her face, relieved to see that her surroundings were at least familiar.  She’d spent enough time at the facility to recognize the austere décor of Io’s crew quarters straight off.

 

Several slow blinks later, she squinted against even meager light issuing from the overheads—a soft, pinkish glow along the middle of the wall that faded up into pale violet along the ceiling.  The station ran on Earth time and the environmental settings controlled the ambient light accordingly.  Being familiar with the particular settings that Admiral Marcus had himself dictated for Io, she knew that this configuration denoted dusk—somewhere around 1900, was her best guess.

 

So she knew where she was and she knew what time it was, which only left about a hundred more questions clawing their way up through the mire in her mind, desperate for an answer.  The last thing she remembered—and only vaguely at that—was waking when they landed to find Khan watching her.  No…not watching; that was too mild a word for it.  _Studying_.  He had been studying her as if she was a problem that needed solving.  From his perspective, she supposed that wasn’t too far off from the truth.  She remembered that she’d said something…something about needing to go to sickbay.  He had frowned then, she had an oddly clear memory of how his dark brows had furrowed and he’d almost looked…put out.  Then she’d stood up and after that, nothing.

 

Glancing down at herself now, at the same clothes she’d been wearing when she boarded the Io transport, at the boots still upon her feet, she rather suspected that she’d never actually made it to sickbay.  But somehow, she _had_ made it here.  How that came about— _why_ that came about—she wasn’t actually certain she wanted to know.

 

She got the distinct feeling that she wasn’t going to like the answers to either of those questions.

 

Thinking hard, trying desperately to dig up even the smallest shred of memory to help remind herself, she sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, chewing at it none too gently; an old habit.  And one that it suddenly occurred to her should have been more than a little painful, given the state of her lip the last time she’d seen it.

 

She retracted her teeth, replacing them with her fingers and felt…nothing.  Her slow, careful exploration found nothing at all except for the smooth curve of her lip.  No split, no scabbing, no pain.  No injury at all.

 

Duval sucked in a sharp breath, bringing her other hand up to her face, questing fingers dancing up to her brow, down to her neck, over her arms, across her mid-section and then down further still to her leg—all with the same results.

 

Nothing.

 

Adrenaline spiked, burning through the last of her mental haze like the sun through mist and she launched herself out of the bed with a strangled yelp, almost tripping over the sheets that tangled about her feet as she charged out the door of the bedroom into the common living space beyond and then into the bathroom.  The lights came up automatically and she planted her hands on either side of the sink, staring with amazement at her reflection in the mirror above.

 

Nothing.

 

Not the slightest hint of bruising or injury.  Not a single scar to be seen.  She leaned in even closer, eyes narrowing in stunned disbelief.  Because not only was there no _new_ scarring, there was no _old_ scarring either.  The puckered patch of silver on the underside of her chin from where she’d fallen out of a tree when she was eight…gone.  The small, ragged line just at the edge of her hairline where her Academy sparring partner’s too-long-for-regulation fingernails had caught her when she’d bobbed just a second too late…vanished.

 

She pulled back from the sink, pulling back her sleeves, yanking up her pant legs—nearly falling over as she tore her boots off; seeking out and yet finding none of the myriad scars that had marked her—each one telling the tale of one adventure or another and each one gone as if it had never been there. 

 

Duval stood up, eyes meeting those of her reflection in the mirror, her breath coming hard and fast and her heart thumping hard in her chest.  There was still more to check…still more to examine…

 

Without letting herself think about it any further, she tore the loose tunic off, eyes skimming her torso in the mirror, looking for the jagged scar just below the edge of her simple, black bra that she’d worn as a reminder since her second year as an Agent; the result of a negotiation gone horribly wrong and ending with her on entirely the wrong end of her own knife.  Erased, like all the rest.

 

She sucked in a deep breath.  Only a bit more now…and she just couldn’t believe it…couldn’t imagine it would be possible…

 

She spun around, putting her back to the mirror.  She stared hard at the wall, blinking furiously against tears as she fought to control the twisting in her stomach.  Blowing out a long, slow breath, she snapped her head back around, twisting as far as she could so that she could catch sight of herself in the mirror, dreading the sight of the long, thin marks that she’d spent her entire adult life trying so damn _hard_ to escape from…

 

But they weren’t there either.  There was nothing there.  Nothing except a smooth, blank expanse of skin where once had lived a lattice work of silver lines, the tinderbox result of a rebellious young girl who had lost her parents too young and a bitter old man who looked at her and saw the man who had cost him his only daughter.

 

For several long heartbeats, she just stared, numb.  She thought about laughing…but that felt wrong.  She considered crying…still wrong.  In the end, she just went with the only thing that felt right.

 

“What the absolute _fuck_?”

 

“Really, Lieutenant…such language.”

 

Duval froze, muscles going tight as a bowstring.  _Khan_.  She hadn’t spared a thought for where he was or what he was doing and she certainly hadn’t expected to find him in her quarters.  But then, were they _only_ her quarters?  Most of Io’s crew housing was single occupancy though the quarters themselves were built for double—the result of such a small full-time crew manning such a large facility.

 

If Marcus had made the arrangements—which, _of course_ he had—then joint quarters would make sense.  Especially in light of his plans regarding her…association…with his pet superman. 

 

“If you have finished gawking at yourself and your decided _lack_ of injury, join me in the sitting room.  We have a great deal to discuss.”

 

Dear _God,_ that voice.  That delectable invitation of a voice…she could only imagine the effect it would have if he ever managed to say something halfway nice.

 

_I am not **nice**_.

 

The memory of those words struck her, followed by the further, though slightly muddled, memory of her own rambling incoherence.  She flinched, dropping her chin toward her chest in mortification—allowable, this once, as there was no one in the room to see it.  Christ Almighty, the things she’d said!

 

Khan had considered her an insect before—how much further had she been downgraded after rambling on like a head case?  She could just picture herself, hovering somewhere around paramecium on his sliding scale of utter idiocy.

 

Because her job hadn’t been near to fucking impossible already.  Lovely.

 

“Or,” Khan’s voice rang out again, sounding less than pleased, “I suppose you could hide in the washroom indefinitely.  The choice is, of course, yours, Lieutenant.”

 

His cutting sarcasm was exactly what she needed.  It gave her the shot of belligerence she needed to brush away the shock, the amazement, the embarrassment, shifting it all down, down, down in her thoughts, tucking everything away out of sight and locking it up tight.   When the weight of all those competing emotions had eased, her head came up and she stepped quickly and purposefully out into the living room.

 

And there he was, looking as cool and collected as she remembered as he sprawled on the sofa, surrounded by schematics and diagrams and several different PADD’s, including the one he currently held in his hands.  His eyes were on the device in his hands and she could see them dancing back and forth, devouring the words on the screen at breakneck speed—far, _far_ quicker than she had ever seen anyone read before.

 

It was impressive, but him being him, she rather suspected she was just going to have to get used to things like that.  They were, after all, going to be seeing a lot of each other.  Far more than even she had anticipated, given what she suspected about their living arrangements.

 

But now wasn’t the time for that.  Now was the time for answers, because she was fairly drowning in questions.  Most importantly…

 

“What the hell happened to me?”

 

Khan’s eyes flicked up, impatience burning in his pale blue gaze—impatience that almost immediately turned to something very much like surprise before snapping almost violently back to irritation.  “Decided to take the Admiral’s route after all, have we, Lieutenant?”

 

That had been truly vicious.  The words themselves were innocuous, but the tone…he’d downright _snarled_ it at her, each syllable absolutely fraught with ferocity.  She narrowed her eyes at him.  “Excuse me?”

 

His mouth—too sensuous by half for a man as hard as he was—compressed, lips pressing into a hard, thin line and the already ridiculously prominent sweep of his cheekbones sharpened as he clenched his jaw.  Then his eyes flicked swiftly and deliberately downward, caught and hung there for a long moment, and then dragged back up to hers, the look in them the oddest mixture of reluctant admission and furious resentment.  Duval frowned in confusion before taking his lead and dropping her own gaze to…

 

Oh.

 

_Oh._

 

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” she hissed, lunging back into the bathroom and snatching up her shirt from where she’d dropped it on the floor.  All that horrifying embarrassment came roaring back and she jammed her arms into the sleeves of the shirt as if it was personally responsible for having crawled off her back in the first place.  Once it was on, she shoved her feet back into her boots, took one last look in the mirror—decided to ignore the haystack that was her hair for the present because the last thing she wanted him to think was that she was trying to pretty herself up for him _at all_ —and then slunk back out into the living area.

 

He was back to his reading again, though she could still see the tension along his jaw.

 

“First of all, no…I’m not…that wasn’t,” she stopped, annoyed with herself and her uncooperative tongue.  “I think I’ve already more than proven that Marcus’ plans are _not_ my plans.  That was…unintentional.  I’m sorry if it...”

 

“Yes, yes,” Khan interrupted, still snarling at her, “I _know_ , Lieutenant.  Do not belabor the point with unnecessary apologies.”

 

She blew out a breath, closed her eyes, determined to center herself.  She was stronger than this.  She was smart and articulate and perfectly rational and she did not turn into a rambling moron in tense situations.  She was Lieutenant Rebecca Duval and she had defied the head of Starfleet himself because she believed her own plans had a better chance of success than his—a supposedly master tactician.

 

Her chin came up.  Her shoulders squared.  She opened her eyes.

 

“I asked you what happened to me, and I would like an answer please.  A really, really good answer.”

 

He didn’t even glance up at her, eyes still trained on the PADD in his hands.  “You were injured, now you are not.  Is further explanation truly necessary?”

 

“It is.” Duval rounded the back of the chair that sat between them, throwing herself down onto the seat and leaning forward to brace her elbows on her knees, eyes on his face.  “It really, absolutely and completely is.  I don’t know why and I don’t know how, but I do know that you’re responsible for this.  Don’t bother trying to deny it; I won’t believe you if you do.  You can’t do…whatever you did…to me and not _tell_ me!”

 

Khan huffed—there was no other word for it; an honest to God _huff_ of pure exasperation.  He lowered the PADD again, eyes finally meeting hers.  “Must we do this?  I have—however little I like it— _work_ that needs doing.  I have already lost two days of true progress to your…incapacitation.  Must I lose more now to your pointless curiosity?  It would be immensely simpler if you would simply accept that I have done you a good turn and move on accordingly.”

 

Duval, for the first time in their short but potent acquaintance, spotted an advantage to be exploited hiding amongst all his grumbling.  He’d admitted that he’d lost time due to her condition, which suggested that he needed her for something.  Exactly what that could possibly be, she had no idea, but if he was convinced of it, then who was she to argue?  Especially as it gave her at least a little bit of workable leverage against a man whose very existence amounted to a perennial upper hand.

 

“Yeah,” she replied, shaking her head and giving him a wry grin, “sorry, but that’s really not gonna happen.  And if you want to get anything of any substance at all done in the near future, you’ll suck it up and start answering because I won’t lift a finger to help until I know what happened.”

 

Another huff and Khan dropped the PADD onto the cushion beside him before crossing his arms over his chest, a portrait of petulance.  “Go on then,” he prompted, “ask your _questions_.”

 

 

Duval wasn’t stupid; she didn’t look anywhere near the mouth on this particular gift horse.  She dove right on in, head first and eyes open.  “You said you’d lost two days…is that how long I was out?”

 

“Yes.”

 

It was a relief—given the sheer magnitude of the healing that had taken place she’d had some truly troubling scenarios drifting through her head, no matter how improbable.  On the other hand, it was also more than a little unnerving.  It had only taken two days for the entire map of her body to be re-written.  She shuddered to think what he done to make that possible.

 

Sticking to the simpler stuff to start, she pressed the larger questions to the wayside for just a bit longer.

 

“I don’t remember much, but I know I was headed for sickbay.  I never got there, did I?”

 

“No.”

 

She stared at him expectantly.  He stared right back.

 

“You’re going to make this as difficult as possible, aren’t you?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Very mature.”

 

“You asked only for answers.  You did not stipulate as to length or breadth.”

 

“Do you want my help or not?”

 

And to her utter amazement, he simply…deflated.  The hardness—the coldness and the anger and the fury—that he had worn like a shroud since the first moment she’d set eyes on him, dissipated.  His proud shoulders dropped, his head fell back against the cushion behind it and his eyes slid closed over a pained grimace.  He pinched the bridge of his nose between a thumb and forefinger and she could almost see the frustration pouring off of him in waves.

 

“ _Want_ , no,” he said, and the strain was there in his voice as well, blunting the leading edge of its visceral thrust.  “Need…” he let the word hang in the air, then sighed.  “You woke when we landed, made a semi-coherent remark about it having been a quick trip followed by a marginally _less_ coherent ramble about finding sickbay.”  He cracked his eyes open, meeting her expectant gaze.  “I suspect you were concussed during the more…vigorous…portions of our earlier discussion in the interrogation room.”

 

Duval snorted out a laugh.  “Yeah, vigorous was exactly the word I was thinking of when you slammed me into a wall and nearly choked me to death.”

 

His eyes snapped back shut.  “I have already said that I will not apologize.”

 

“And I’ve already said that I don’t expect you to,” Duval answered, shrugging though he couldn’t see it.  “Now, back to the story...I said I was heading to sickbay.  Why didn’t I make it there?”

 

“Because you hadn’t taken two steps before you dropped in a heap, completely unconscious and even more useless than you had been before.  It was lucky for you that I had already decided on a course of action for you, one that did not include the involvement of any medical personnel.  Thus, your weakness proved my ally.  I carried you off the ship, played the concerned comrade to the personnel who came out to meet us and was granted an escort to our shared quarters.”  Another slit-eyed look.  “Marcus is almost disturbingly invested in the seduction scenario he’d envisioned.”

 

Duval’s grin was faint and she fought very hard to keep any bitterness out of it.  “Lucky for us you’re a god and I’m a dancing monkey.  Never the twain shall meet and all that, right?”

 

He hummed noncommittally, though his eyes opened wider and his head lifted, that innate confidence lifting him out of his momentary defeatist posture.  “Once I had assured our fretful attendant—a surprisingly green young Ensign called Ferguson who I doubt will last a year under Marcus’ command—that all was well and that it really was preferable that he should remove himself from our quarters with all due haste, I put you in bed and set to work,” here he paused, and she could tell that he was choosing his words with care, “correcting the situation.”

 

“I guess I should thank you for being polite enough to put me in a bed rather than just dumping me in a corner,” she admitted, “but you could have at least taken my boots off.”

 

The look he shot her was eloquent in its derision.

 

“Right,” she said with a sigh, waving off the observation.  “Nevermind.  Anyway…what does that mean, exactly?  How did you correct the situation?”

 

“I made the untenable, tenable.”

 

“That’s not actually an answer,” she accused.  “ _How_ did you make the untenable, tenable?”

 

“Quite successfully, it would seem.”

 

If she thought it would have done any good at all, she would have screamed.  “Stop bullshitting me,” she flung the words at him, hard and fast.  “You were the one talking about wasted time and now you’re wasting even more of it by being evasive.”

 

Khan met her gaze squarely, unapologetically.  “I had a hypothesis.  I tested the hypothesis.  You are better because of it.  That is as much of an explanation as I will give on the subject.  Accept it or not, that is your prerogative.”

 

He wasn’t bluffing.  She could hear the finality in his voice.  But that was fine, because she suddenly found herself less interested in the particulars.  The general concept of the situation was more than enough to be getting on with.

 

Duval squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, trying very hard not to get as angry as she really, really wanted to.  “You…tested…a hypothesis.” 

 

“So I said.  Do keep up, Lieutenant.”

 

“If it was a hypothesis, that would seem to suggest that you didn’t actually know that it—whatever _it_ is—would work or not, yes?”

 

Khan shrugged, negligent in the face of her mounting fury.  “I was more than confident that I had the right of it.  It was a risk, yes, but a calculated one.  I weighed the possibilities and found that the potential benefits far outstripped the possible harm and proceeded thus.”

 

She blew out a breath that turned into a hiss of displeasure.  “And if you’d been _wrong?_ Do I even want to know what could have happened if your _hypothesis_ had proven unsound?”

 

“As I do not myself know the answer to that, I can hardly say.  I suppose you might have died, which clearly is the answer that you are fishing for.  But you didn’t and therefore, the point is moot.”

 

“You experimented on me, had no idea if it would kill me or not and it never occurred to you that it might be a good idea to discuss it with me first?”

 

“You were unconscious; discussion was not an option.”  The bastard didn’t even have the courtesy to look even a little bit contrite.

 

“Then you should have waited until it was!”

 

“A waste of time,” he dismissed, “much like this entire conversation.  You are fine, Lieutenant.  Better than fine—you are _well_.  More importantly, you are _useful._  Why is that not all that matters?”

 

“You used me as a lab rat!”  And oh, she was truly in a fine frenzy now, every muscle humming with restrained fury and moss green eyes ablaze.  “You played God with my _life_ and you think the fact that I’m now _useful_ to you is all that matters?  Who the fuck do you think you are?”

 

Khan went still at that.  Very still.  She could feel the energy in the room shift, the atmosphere growing thick with the same tension she’d felt once before and she was struck by the extraordinarily vivid memory of his hand around her neck—and by the realization that she had once again managed to thoroughly piss off the most dangerous creature she had ever laid eyes.  When he looked up this time, his eyes were blazing—the aloof mask once more stripped away to reveal the inferno that raged beneath.

 

He stood, slowly and with a dangerous, feline grace that sent a shiver up Duval’s spine—a not entirely fearful shiver, at that.  He did not advance on her, but she had to fight the urge to retreat anyway.  Looming above her, he glared down at her, wrath personified.

 

“You would do well, _Lieutenant Duval_ , to mind…your…tongue.”  His voice was a dark, roiling thing; a molten flow of sound that felt like it could set the very air on fire.  “I have been extraordinarily generous; but my liberality only goes so far.  If you continue to push me, I will, I promise you, push back far harder than your well-demonstrated human frailty can endure.  This conversation is _over_.  I will retire to my room for the night, confident that you will awake on the morrow with the understanding that it is in your best interest to aide me when I ask for it and keep your mouth _shut_ when I do not.  Have I made myself clear?”

 

Only an idiot would argue—and she wasn’t at all an idiot.  But she also had a job to do, even if she found herself in the unknown territory of her subject _knowing_ what that job was beforehand.  The fact of the matter was though, that she needed to earn his trust.  And a man like Khan was never, ever going to extend something as precious as that to someone who cowered before him like a dog.

 

Bracing herself, knowing full well that she was taking a hell of a risk, but still relying on that little slice of leverage he’d allowed her— _he’d said that he needed her; he didn’t say things he didn’t mean; he wouldn’t have said it if he didn’t mean it—_ Duval slowly pushed herself up and out of the chair.  She straightened to her full height, which was still several inches shorter than him, lifted her chin and looked him square in the eye.

 

“I’ll help you because it’s my job.  But let _me_ make something very clear—I am _not_ your slave.  I’m not your servant, your subordinate or even your assistant.  I will not spend however long this assignment lasts being threatened every time I express an opinion you find offensive.  You are brilliant and you are powerful and yes, once upon a time, a whole lot of people bowed down to you.  But I’m not one of them and I won’t ever _be_ one of them.”

 

The room itself held its breath.

 

For a very long moment, he just stared at her, lips pressed together so hard that there was a thin, white line around his mouth.

 

“I am Khan Noonien Singh,” he hissed, his voice quiet and terrifying.  “I ruled an Empire that spanned a quarter of the globe.  I could have held the world in the palm of my hand had I so chosen….”

 

“With all due respect, that was three hundred years ago,” Duval interrupted, using every last ounce of nerve she possessed.  She didn’t sneer, she didn’t snap.  She just said what she wanted to say, calmly, matter-of-factly.  “The world is a much bigger place than it was then.  Now…you’re just a paragraph in a history book that nobody even bothers to read anymore.”

 

Khan’s head jerked backwards, only very slightly, but still…for him...it was a marked retreat.  He was looking at her again, that penetrating, studying look that set the hairs on the back of her neck on end.  This time, she just watched him right back, holding her composure with nothing but sheer will.

 

Suddenly and without further comment, he spun away from her, stalking across the room with loping, ground-eating strides before disappearing into the bedroom opposite hers, the door sliding shut behind him with an oddly appropriate hiss.  As soon as he was out of sight, Duval crumpled, suddenly shaking legs refusing to hold her up any longer. 

 

She dropped back down into the chair behind her, trembling fingers coming up to rub across her burning cheeks, knowing that she’d done _something_ with her display of spine, but entirely unsure what that _something_ was.  Success…failure…both loomed before her, neither feeling any closer than the other and she felt sickened by the uncertainty, the doubt.

It—the entire situation—was different; against the grain.  Ambiguity was generally an ally that she cultivated with alacrity while on the job.  But at that moment, being just as equally on the wrong end of it as he was, she’d never hated anything more.

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Somewhere I Have Never Travelled**

**Alethnya**

 

 

_nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals_

_the power of your intense fragility:whose texture_

_compels me with the color of its countries,_

_rendering death and forever with each breathing_

_-ee cummings_

 

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**Disclaimer:  I own nothing.**

**A/N:  Another long chapter full of essential plot development-y _stuff_.  Enjoy!**

**Shout out to my beta—I <3 you, Xaraphis!**

**_________________________________________________________________________________**

 

**Chapter 7**

 

Duval woke the next morning absolutely brimming with energy.  The lingering lethargy of the previous evening had been swept away entirely by another round of dead-to-the-world sleep and for the first time since the ambiguously successful mission on Capella IV, she felt… _good_.

 

Better than good.

 

She felt fucking fantastic.  Almost the best she’d ever felt in her entire life.

 

And if it weren’t for the knowledge of how it all had come about—or rather, the distinct lack thereof—hanging over her head, there would have been no _almost_ about it.  She would have liked nothing more than to just put it behind her, move forward and pretend that nothing remarkable had happened—but unfortunately, there were a few loose ends she would need to tie up before that became possible.

 

Two loose ends, specifically.

 

The first, she could deal with immediately.  Dr. Carlson—the Chief Medical Officer of the Io facility—would have been notified of her impending arrival, and therefore of her current medical status.  Or at least, what had been her current medical status.  How exactly she was going to explain the disparity between two days ago and now, she had no idea; but if Duval was good at anything, it was thinking on her feet.

 

The second…

 

Marcus needed to know.  She’d screwed herself pretty thoroughly with him by going around his orders the way she had, regardless of how necessary it had been to the end he had in mind.  If she had a hope in hell of getting herself back into his good graces, she was going to have to go out of her way to smooth his feathers.  As little as she wanted to discuss the issue with him, she knew she had to and quickly.  He had eyes everywhere and any of them could report back to him at any given time.  He needed to hear it from her first.

 

She would have much preferred to buy herself some time, see if she could figure out _how_ Khan had done it.  But with as adamant as he had been about telling her nothing else, that simply didn’t appear to be a viable option.  Marcus wasn’t going to like the sketchy explanation, but it would be better than nothing at all in the long run.

 

So she’d head first to sickbay, then directly to the Facility Commander’s office to request a face-to-face with the Admiral in one of the private comm rooms and ready herself for the song and dance she was going to have to put on for the sake of her career.

 

_…you are nothing more than a dancing monkey, waltzing to his tune…_

Khan’s words.  Duval pressed her lips together, annoyed not to be able to discount them quite as easily as she had at the time he’d said them.

 

The bastard.

 

With her two key tasks in mind, she set about getting herself ready.  She braved the silence of the living room, the lure of a hot shower far outstripping her nerves about encountering her reluctant roommate after the drama of the previous evening.  To her relief, the living room stood empty and Khan’s door remained quite emphatically closed as she tiptoed to the bathroom.  After indulging in a longer than normal shower, she made quick work of preparing herself for the day ahead.  She’d forgone the looser clothes she’d been wearing during her convalescence, opting instead for her habitual, close-fitting long-sleeved black top and trousers.  Her shoulder length hair was twisted up into its customary knot high on the back of her head, her makeup was applied with the light but effective hand that it always was, and once she was done, she looked in the mirror and was relieved to see a much more familiar version of herself staring back at her.

 

After gathering her things together and making a hurried dash back to her bedroom, she pulled on her boots and made for the main door before her luck ran out and Khan decided to show himself.  Once out in the corridor, she breathed out a sigh and started toward sickbay.

 

Twenty minutes later—after a stop in the mess for a very quick bite to eat—she walked into Carlson’s office without bothering to announce herself and planted herself in one of the chairs on the opposite side of the doctor’s desk.

 

“I need to ask you a favor,” she said breezily, assuming as unaffected an air as possible.

 

Carlson, a staid woman of 53 who had been with the Section long enough to know better, took both the unannounced intrusion and the apropos of nothing conversation starter in stride.  “And hello to you too, Agent Duval.”  She set aside her PADD and leaned back in her chair, arms folding across her chest.  “I’d heard you were joining us out here in the back of beyond.  Lovely to see you and yes, I’m doing quite well, thank you.”

 

Duval smiled.  “Good to know.  I still need a favor.”

 

The doctor eyed her speculatively through narrowed eyes.  “You often do,” she said, a tad waspishly but still largely pleasant.  “I’d expected you to be in here begging me to revoke at least some of the restrictions Pedregon slapped you with in his last assessment, but oddly enough you don’t look like you need any of them at all.”

 

“And thus the favor,” Duval said, still smiling.  “As you can see, I’m all good.  I need you to clear me for full active duty.  I’ve got a lot to do and the limited access that comes with the medical restrictions is liable to become a real pain in the ass.”

 

Carlson gave her a wry grin.  “That’s certainly easy enough and not really worth calling a ‘favor’.  I assume the _real_ favor you’re asking for is in regards to the required physical and psych evals that go along with reassigning you to active duty.”

 

“I don’t have time for either,” Duval affirmed, abandoning any attempts at double talk.  Carlson was too well versed in dealing with covert operatives for it to be necessary.  “If it helps, I’ll promise to come by and let you run your tests when I do.”

 

“Which will be never, but it’s sporting of you to at least make the attempt,” Carlson replied, rolling her eyes.  “In all honesty, Duval, I’m as much a stickler for protocol as you are—I don’t give a damn about it.  I’ve also known you long enough to trust your judgment.  If you say you’re fine, then you’re fine.  If you’re wrong and it gets you killed, that’s your fault, not mine.  I certainly won’t lose sleep over it.”  She leaned forward, elbows propped on her desk.  “Now, what _does_ concern me is that I have to put my name to the status override.  To do that, I have to provide a legitimate reason as to _why_ I am making the change.  What plausible explanation can I give for clearing an Agent who a week ago was barely able to avoid being placed on mandatory medical leave?”

 

“Oh please,” Duval waved away Carlson’s concerns, “you know exactly what to do—slap Top Secret Classified on it and you’re golden.  Now stop being dramatic and clear me, Doc.”

 

“I do that and it automatically goes to Admiral Marcus’ office for review and final approval.”  It was said as a statement but the question mark was implicit.

 

“Not a problem.”

 

Carlson’s look of surprise was unmistakable.  “Really?”

 

Duval tensed, hearing worlds of meaning behind the seemingly simple question.  “That’s surprising?  You know better than most that I have the Admiral’s ear.”

 

“ _Had_ ,” Carlson corrected, accentuating the word. “You _had_ the Admiral’s ear, Duval.  Rumor has it that things have changed.”

 

Ah.  So tongues had been wagging.  It was embarrassing and unbelievably annoying but not particularly surprising—for a covert organization, the Section was full of people who didn’t know how to keep their damn mouths shut.  Duval bit back her immediate response, knowing that a display of temper would do her no favors with the doctor.  “A bump in the road,” she admitted, “but nothing that will prevent the Admiral from signing off on this.  In fact, I plan to speak to him about the situation as soon as I finish here with you.  By the time the request hits his desk, he’ll be fully aware of the details.”

 

Carlson cocked a brow, clearly chewing on Duval’s words.  “You’re a good Agent, Duval—one of the best, as you well know.  More than that, I’ve always found you to be surprisingly honest, considering your job.  But I’ve worked too long and too hard to get where I’m at.  I’ll get the status change written up and ready to go, but until I get word from the Admiral himself that it will be approved for classified status, that’s as far as it will go.”

 

It wasn’t what she’d hoped for, but it was much better than it could have been.  Duval gave the doctor a sharp nod.  “Deal.  Like I said, despite my…misunderstanding with the Admiral, he’ll not only be willing to approve it, he’ll be eager to.  My current assignment is his newest pet project.”

 

At that, Carlson relaxed, leaning back in her chair and exuding once more the guarded friendliness that Duval had always appreciated in her.  “Ah yes, Commander John Harrison,” she picked up her PADD and turned it so that Duval could see, the personnel file on the man himself glowing on the screen.  “I’ve just been familiarizing myself with our new weapons specialist.  His medical history is oddly…spotty; too spotty to be particularly useful. ”

 

Duval looked away from the PADD.  “If you’re going to suggest that he needs to get up here for a full medical workup, I’m going to suggest that you not even bother.  He won’t do it.”

 

“You’re his handler, aren’t you?”

 

Duval laughed, a choked snort that spoke volumes.  “Yeah, trust me when I tell you…that won’t mean a damn thing in this instance.”

 

“And here we run into the brick wall of protocol yet again,” Carlson sighed.  “He’s a newly arrived permanent resident of Io.  There are reports…”

 

“Yet another point that I will bring up to the Admiral when I speak to him,” Duval assured, standing from her seat.  It was time to get the hell out of there before the good doctor could set a match to any more fires that she would have to put out.  “But I can promise you this—he’ll approve of you overlooking just about every protocol there is where Harrison is concerned.”

 

Carlson didn’t stand in return, just gave a shrug.  “That’s fine if it’s true—less work for me, after all.  Again though, I’ll believe it when I hear it from the Admiral himself.”

 

*             *             *

 

Ten minutes later, Duval was seated in front of yet another desk—a position she was getting very, very tired of, quite frankly.  If there was one thing she hated about her job, it was the politics that went along with it.  She was many things, but an office drone was absolutely _not_ one of them.

 

This particular desk belonged to newly appointed Facility Commander Rafael Vazquez.  She knew him well, better than just about anyone else in the Section.  They’d been at the Academy together, had in fact belonged to the same vague social circle.  She wouldn’t have called them friends, but they had always been friendly; a fact that she was banking on to make her stay at Io all the easier.  Charming wasn’t something that she did particularly well, but she could put on a good enough show of it as the situation demanded.

 

“Becca Duval,” the Commander said and she could hear the nostalgia coloring the words…even as she cringed at the old nickname.  “It’s been far too long!”

 

Sure.  She could go with that.

 

“It really has,” she agreed, smiling at him prettily.  “Last I remember you, you were celebrating our Section initiation with too much cheap whiskey and old Catalan folk songs.”

 

Vazquez smiled in return, wide and perfect—a handsome man who knew just how handsome he was.  “Something I only vaguely remember myself, for obvious reasons.  I do remember you though.  You were barely drinking at all…just kept nursing your beer and rolling your eyes at how ridiculous all the rest of us were.”

 

“Oh, I wasn’t as bad as all that,” Duval denied, coy now.  “I just figured _someone_ needed to keep their head straight since none of the rest of you were anywhere close to sober.  It was a good thing I did too—or had you blacked out by the time Radcliffe and Hughes decided to pick a fight with three very large men with very bad tempers?”

 

The Commander narrowed his eyes, clearly looking back in his memory.  After a long moment, he let out a bark of laughter.  “Was that where Radcliffe’s broken nose came from?”

 

Duval smirked.  “No.  That was all me.”

 

Vazquez shook his head but couldn’t wipe the grin off his face.  “Christ, Becca…you wonder why just about everyone thought you were a bitch!”

 

Ten years ago, that would have stung.  Now, she didn’t even flinch.

 

“If the piss drunk idiot had known when to shut his mouth, I wouldn’t have had to do it for him,” she dismissed, already growing bored with this little stroll down memory lane.  She met the Commander’s eyes, all her false cheer melting away.  “And I never once wondered why people called me a bitch, Commander.”

 

To his credit, Vazquez saw the change—recognized it immediately and reacted accordingly.  Before her eyes, his entire demeanor changed until she was sitting in front of the Facility Commander and not an old Academy buddy.  “No, I don’t suppose you would,” he acknowledged with a nod.  “Now, as fun as it is to reminisce, I assume you had something much more important in mind when you asked to see me.”

 

Firmly back on more professional ground, Duval relaxed into the conversation.  “I did, sir,” the honorific feeling only right now that they were back to business.  “First, I need access to one of the private comms.”

 

Vazquez nodded like it was no more than he had expected.  “To speak to Admiral Marcus, I’m sure.  That’s no problem.  In fact, as soon as I was briefed on your assignment, I set you up with a personal access code to the private comms—you can get it from my assistant when we’re finished here.  The Admiral made it clear that he expected regular updates from you on Harrison’s progress.”

 

Well, that was handy.  She’d been planning to request that kind of carte blanche access eventually anyway, but she certainly hadn’t expected it to be handed to her outright.

 

“I’ve also taken the liberty of pulling together a list of all the available development labs for you and Commander Harrison.  I don’t know exactly what kind of space you’re looking to set up shop in, but this is a large facility and we are currently running on a virtual skeleton crew…so you’re pretty much spoiled for choice.  You and Harrison can scope them all out and let me know when you’ve picked one that suits your needs and I’ll have security lock it down to the appropriate clearance level.”

 

Duval couldn’t hold back the surprise that she _knew_ was written all over her face.  “That’s…I don’t…” she shook her head, blowing out a huff of disbelief.  “I’m not used to things being this easy.  You’ve anticipated every single thing I was going to ask you.”

 

And just that quickly, Vazquez was smiling again, the Commander receding and the colleague stepping forward.  “As much as I would love to be able to take credit, I can’t.  Admiral Marcus was very clear about just how important this project is and I have a feeling that what he told me is only the tip of a very large iceberg.  I’ve only just gotten this promotion—you can bet I’m going to do everything in my power to make this a success.”

 

Running that through her internal filters, what Duval actually heard was _you can bet I’m going to do everything in my power to make this a success so that even if it’s not, it can’t possibly be blamed on me._   Not that that was a problem.  On the contrary, it actually improved her opinion of him—she’d always found Vazquez to be horribly sentimental.  If what she’d seen of him in this conversation was any indication, age and experience had tempered that tendency, leaving him only somewhat sentimental, which was far more palatable.

 

Convenient, too.  She would take full advantage of that lingering sentimentality where she could.

 

“I appreciate your help with this,” she admitted with a sigh.  “Dealing with Harrison is going to be…trying.  Knowing that you’ve got my back on the administrative side of things will be a huge weight off my shoulders.”

 

Now Vazquez was practically preening—odd, as she’d never known him to be particularly self-satisfied.  “Like I said, Becca…I really can’t take any of the credit.  Although I admit that I’m happy to be in a position to help you.  Now,” he smacked a hand down on his desk, palm flat to the glass, “I think you’d better get on the comm to Marcus.  Wouldn’t want him hearing about your magical healing powers from anyone else, now would you?”

 

Duval, who had been preparing to stand, froze, narrowed gaze lifting to his.  “You know about that.”

 

Vazquez flashed another of those superstar smiles, all white teeth, tanned skin and dancing, dark eyes.  “Lieutenant Duval, you’ll find out very quickly that when it comes to this station, I am all-seeing, all-hearing and all-knowing.  I am the reigning God of Io and…”

 

“…and Carlson contacted you as soon as I walked out of her office, didn’t she?”

 

The Commander’s smile never dimmed, though it did shift into something slightly more sheepish.  “Yeah, she did.  But can you really blame her, Becca?  Everyone knows you’re in the doghouse with Marcus right now.”

 

Duval stood, looking down at him now.  “So when I walk out the door, I can expect you to be on the comm to hq before it closes behind me?”

 

All humor drained from his face, sincerity filling the void left behind.  “I’m not everyone, Becca.  I’ve known you for a very long time.  I’ll always give you the benefit of the doubt.”

 

He meant it, she could tell.  He actually meant it.  Apparently, he’d considered them far better friends than she ever had.

 

It was…well…in all honesty, it was shockingly stupid.  One of the first and most important lessons she’d learned was never to trust anyone further than you absolutely had to in order to get a job done.  Vazquez either hadn’t learned that or had been out of the field so long that he’d forgotten, but damned if it wasn’t the biggest ace in the hole she could possibly imagine.  Knowledge like that could very well prove golden one day, so she tucked it into her back pocket.

 

“Thank you for that, sir,” she said as she stepped away from his desk and toward the door, turning back just as it hissed open to let her out.  “I appreciate it more than you will ever know.”

 

She stepped out and left him to take her meaning as he would.

 

*             *             *

 

After getting the code from the Commander’s assistant as instructed, Duval made her way to one of the comm rooms just down the corridor.  Communications on Io were tightly monitored and regulated, though no one she’d ever discussed the issue with had known why.  The general assumption was that it had everything to do with the fact that Marcus was habitually paranoid and liked to stick his fingers in everyone else’s pie.  She’d never actually cared why before, but now, she thought that explanation sounded too right not to be true.

 

As she punched in the code on the keypad outside the first available room she came to, she tried very hard not to think about the fact that she was going to spend the foreseeable future living under an extremely high-powered microscope.

 

Once inside, she sealed the door behind her, sat down in front of the comm, took a deep, centering breath, and punched in the code that would contact the Admiral directly, no matter where he was.  For a short moment, she entertained the notion that maybe she’d be lucky…maybe he’d be busy, in the middle of a meeting with Starfleet High Command…

 

“This better be un-fucking-believably good, Duval.”

 

…or he could be sitting in his office at the Kelvin facility, with absolutely nothing to keep him from answering immediately.

 

Shoring up her nerve— _you have nothing to be sorry about, nothing to regret, you did nothing wrong—_ she dipped her head deferentially.  “Admiral Marcus,” she acknowledged.  “I can promise you, sir, that I wouldn’t be bothering you if I didn’t feel it was absolutely necessary.”

 

“Well then, by all means, _Lieutenant_ , spit it out.  You’ve only been there a few days so I highly doubt…” he stopped, the words dying on his tongue as he suddenly leaned in closer to the comm on his end, his face filling the screen in front of her almost comically.  “You’re all healed up.  How the _hell_ are you all healed up?”

 

“That’s exactly what I was contacting you about, sir.  Unfortunately, I can’t actually answer that question because I don’t know.”

 

The Admiral leaned back, his face returning to normal proportions on her viewscreen.  “Explain.”

 

Duval shrugged, annoyed all over again by the situation.  “That’s just it, sir.  I can’t explain.  I can’t explain because I have no idea how it was done.  All that I _do_ know is that it was K…” she paused, catching herself in the nick of time, “… _Harrison_.”

 

“Harrison?”

 

He was at least listening to her—more than that, she’d caught his attention.  When Marcus wasn’t interested, he waxed poetic on any number of tangentially related topics rather than focusing on the subject at hand.  But this…he was fully focused on her and what she was saying.

 

“He did… _something_ to me, sir.  Something that damn near put me in a coma for two days. But whatever it was, it worked.  Everything’s perfect now.  It’s like I was never injured in the first place.”

 

Marcus made a low hum of acknowledgement, his mind clearly whirring with this information.  “I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume he outright refused to explain what he did to you.”

 

She nodded.  “The most he would say was that he had tested a hypothesis and that I should just be happy that he had fixed me.”

 

“Did he say _why_ he did it?”

 

“Because he needed me healthy to help him with his work and I was useless to him as I was.”

 

The Admiral snorted, and she could hear the honest amusement in it.  “Yeah, that’s got Harrison written all over it.”

 

“High-handed does seem to be his middle name, sir.”

 

That earned her a sharp, pointed look that cut through any fleeting levity that had existed in their conversation.  “After that little stunt _you_ pulled, Duval, I’d be careful about accusing other people of being _high-handed_.”

 

Duval met that look head on, not backing down even a little bit.  “You wanted him to trust me, sir.  I’m a hell of a lot closer to that goal than I would have been if I’d done it your way.”

 

“You disobeyed my explicit directives…”

 

“No, sir,” Duval cut in, temper held very firmly in check.  “You _suggested_ that I behave a certain way.  You also said that ultimately you didn’t care _how_ I did it, just that it got done.”

 

“And you think pissing him off to the point of _murder_ is what I meant by getting it done?”

 

Her chin came up, pride carrying her even further than sheer nerve alone.  “As I said before, Admiral—you want me to win his trust.  Admittedly, I’m nowhere near that objective yet.  But I’m a hell of a lot closer than anyone else at present—or am I wrong about him saying he wouldn’t work with anyone but me?”

 

Marcus was quiet for a long moment, cobalt eyes studying her intently.  “You’ve always gone your own way, Duval,” he said at length, voice far quieter, more introspective than she’d ever heard it before.  “It never bothered me before and it’s a big part of what makes you elite.  But I’ve gotta admit, it bothers the living shit outta me now.”

 

Duval frowned, confused and not hesitating to show it.  “I don’t understand, sir—what’s changed?  I’m still the same Agent that I’ve always been.”

 

“Maybe,” Marcus cocked his head to the side, eyes narrowing, “and maybe not.  You’re just gonna have to prove that to me, Lieutenant.”

 

“Admiral Marcus, sir…it will be my absolute pleasure.”

 

Another of those considering hums.  “Well we’ll certainly see, won’t we?”  He stared at her, hard, for another long moment, then gave a sharp nod.  “Now…are we finished or is there anything else?”

 

“Two small things, actually, sir.”

 

“Fine.  Be quick though…I’m due in a meeting shortly.”

 

Duval nodded briskly.  “Aye, sir.  First, Doctor Carlson is going to be submitting my medical status change to your office for approval on granting it classified status, sir.”

 

Marcus frowned again.  “I need to know this why?”

 

“Because, sir, the Doctor says that she won’t submit the change until she knows for a fact that you’ll approve it for classified status.  She says she won’t risk her reputation on my word alone.”

 

The Admiral’s frown deepened.  “I assume Doctor Carlson has been listening to the tongue-waggers then.”

 

Duval nodded.  “I believe so, sir.”

 

“Disappointing,” Marcus said, shaking his head.  “I expected better of Carlson.  But fine, I’ll make it clear that I expect the status change on my desk by end of day.”

 

“Thank you, sir.  One more thing, sir…also involving Doctor Carlson.”

 

“Christ,” Marcus muttered, rubbing his eyes in annoyance.  “What else, Duval?”

 

“The Doctor is of the opinion that Commander Harrison’s medical records are somewhat light.  She suggested I get him into sickbay for a full work up.  I told her it wasn’t going to happen; assured her that you would sign off on the regular protocols being overlooked when it came to Harrison.  Again, she wanted to hear it from you personally.”

 

“Lieutenant, consider it handled.  And consider the Doctor duly warned that I don’t have time to referee this kind of bullshit.  While I’m at it, consider yourself duly warned as well.”

 

“Understood, sir.”

 

“Next time I see your face on this screen, Duval, I expect to be overwhelmed with progress—both his _and_ yours.  And I don’t think I need to tell you that it better be sooner rather than later.”

 

“Aye, sir.”

 

Without another word, Marcus tapped a button and cut the feed, the viewscreen before her going black.  Duval let out a long, low sigh, more than relieved that it was over—and fairly painlessly at that. 

 

She definitely had a long way to go, but it was a start.  It would take a hell of a lot more to get her ass out of the fire, but all she had to do was keep going as she was and she had no doubt that she would be back in the Admiral’s good graces in no time. 

 

And while she may not have been quite as eager for the old man’s approval as she had once been, she’d worked too long and too hard to throw it all away now.  Her loyalty, now and always, was to the Section.  Marcus would see that in time.

 

She’d make damn sure of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing.
> 
>  
> 
> A/N: Happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers! My goal was to get this done before the holiday, and yay me, I did it! As always, thank you for the reviews/kudos! Shout out to my beta—I <3 you, Xaraphis!
> 
>  
> 
> Also, from here on out, I do solemnly swear that I will do my level best to respond to every review. Cross my heart!

 

 

_nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals_

_the power of your intense fragility:whose texture_

_compels me with the color of its countries,_

_rendering death and forever with each breathing_

_-ee cummings_

 

____________________________________________________________________________________

 

**Chapter 8**

 

 

It had been a productive morning. 

 

In just a over an hour and a half, Duval had managed to check three very trying items off her to-do list and she had managed each of them with considerable aplomb, if she did say so herself.  But given the next item waiting to be ticked off that list, she found it difficult to hold onto the satisfaction engendered by her industriousness.  It waned with every step she took, draining out of her like water through a sieve as she came ever closer to her destination.  By the time she stood in front of the door to her— _their_ —quarters, it had wicked away entirely, leaving nothing but churning apprehension in its stead.

 

She didn’t like the feeling—resented the hell out of it, actually.  She was not, in general, given to anxiety.  Yet the man waiting on the other side of the door before her seemed uniquely gifted at turning her notoriously unflappable composure on its head.  Indeed, from the moment she’d laid eyes on him, her meticulously regimented world had been spun like a top, leaving her lurching to and fro, desperately fighting to find her footing in the chaos that followed in his wake.

 

She had already been well aware that their situation needed to change.  But after everything she had learned this morning, that point was driven even further home.  If she had a hope in hell of salvaging her reputation, mired now in a sucking morass of suspicion and doubt, she needed to cultivate an entirely different relationship with her charge—preferably one that _didn’t_ revolve around the destructive cycle of provocation and retaliation that had defined their interactions thus far. 

 

It wasn’t going to be easy.   Khan was as volatile as she was stubborn; a spectacularly combustible combination, of which they had demonstrable proof.  But for the sake of the name she had made for herself—the position she had fought and clawed her way into—she could do it.  She _would_ do it. 

 

And she was going to make a start of it right now.

 

Sucking in and then blowing out a deep, bracing breath, she stepped forward, activated the door, and walked into the lion’s den…

 

…only to find that the lion in question was nowhere in sight.

 

The thin strip of light visible beneath the firmly closed door indicated that Khan was in his bedroom, but she knew at once that he had emerged at some point in her absence—the schematics and PADD that had still been sitting in the lounge area when she’d left earlier were gone.  Apparently, he intended to apply himself to the task diligently, which was an enormous relief.  There was nothing quite so frustrating and ultimately futile as attempting to _make_ someone care about something when they didn’t.

 

Of course, Khan had some fairly powerful motivation…

 

_How large is his crew?  How many lives is Marcus holding over his head?_

 

The questions flitted through her mind before she could squash them, and Duval’s stomach clenched in response; her conscience—atrophied but still _there_ —needled her unpleasantly.  _Don’t think about it_ , she growled to herself— _at_ herself—frowning deep, _just…don’t think about it.  Focus on the here and now and let Marcus worry about the rest.  His call…his burden.  Not yours._

 

It was a rationalization, but she didn’t care.  She had too many other things to worry about at present without adding an ethical dilemma into the already turbulent mix.

 

And so, PADD in hand—courtesy of Commander Vazquez’s assistant; the list of potential workspaces open and waiting on the screen—she gathered her nerve and marched straight to Khan’s door.  Forgoing the comm on the wall, she raised her free hand, clenched her fist and delivered three sharp raps to the steel surface; an old fashioned approach in deference to old fashioned sensibilities.  It might mean absolutely nothing to him, but to her, it was the opening salvo in her campaign to win his trust. 

 

She took two healthy steps back afterward, taking herself well outside of his personal space not only out of a healthy sense of self-preservation, but also as a subtle show of respect.  He struck her as the type whose preferences on personal space ran toward the expansive.

 

In point of fact, he struck her as the type whose entire existence tended toward the vast and towering; the larger than life.  She hadn’t known him long and certainly didn’t know him well, but she rather doubted that there was anything even remotely ordinary about Khan Noonien Singh.

 

When the door hissed open a moment later and she found herself once more faced with the man himself, her doubts crystallized into certainty.  There was absolutely nothing common about a man who could make plain black clothes, tousled hair and bare feet look downright _majestic._

For a long moment, they just looked at one another, the air between them vibrating with wary reticence. 

 

_Stalemate,_ Duval recognized. 

 

They had officially reached the crossroads—whatever this was going to be, however it was going to turn out...blazing success or crashing failure, it all hinged on this one moment.  And Duval knewthat if it was going to be the former rather than the latter, _she_ was going to have to make the first move.

 

“Good morning,” she said, lips curving up into a tentative half-smile as she extended the PADD into the space between them.  “It’s not much,” she nodded toward her outstretched arm, “but it’s the closest thing to an olive branch that I could find.”

 

He stared at her intently, electric blue gaze taking her in, assessing as it swept her from head to toe before shifting to the proffered device.  Without a word, he reached out and took it from her, and then looked down to the screen, scanning the information it held.

 

“I spoke to the Facility Commander,” she elaborated as he read.  “That’s a list of all the available labs on the station.  All things considered, I figure you could do with a more functional work space.”

 

He looked back up at her, expression shuttered, though she could tell that big, brilliant brain of his was whirring away.

 

“If you like, we can scout out the different locations today.  You know what you’ll need better than I do, so the final call is yours once we’ve seen what each space has to offer.”

 

After one final stem to stern perusal of her person, she knew he’d come to his own decision on the matter; could feel the air between them shift, the tension between them easing ever so slightly.  He straightened, standing just a little bit taller as he handed the PADD back to her.

 

“That,” he said at length, the right hand corner of his mouth quirking very faintly upwards into the closest approximation of a smile she had seen from him yet,  “would be acceptable, Lieutenant.”

 

Duval took the PADD, biting back on the satisfied grin that pulled at her lips.  This was as good an outcome as she could have hoped for—they had managed a polite exchange.  Yes, she felt like gloating over even this tiny victory, but she doubted he would appreciate the sentiment and she wasn’t about to test the theory.     “All right then,” she said mildly, once more taking in his disheveled appearance.  “We can get started as soon as you’re ready, if that works for you?”

 

“It does,” he responded.  “I will not be a moment, Lieutenant.”

 

And then he stepped back and the door hissed shut and Duval sagged with relief.  They had actually managed a conversation in which neither of them pissed the other off—considering their short but explosive history, she was fully prepared to call that a _rousing_ success.  Now she just had to figure out how to keep it that way.

 

***

 

Three hours later, Duval’s head was throbbing and it was taking every shred of self-control she possessed not to throw her PADD straight at Khan’s annoyingly perfect face.  As soon as they finished— _if_ they ever finished—she was going straight to the Officer’s Lounge and diving head first into a very large mug of beer.  A process she planned to repeat until the urge to do him bodily harm had passed; possibly beyond even that.

 

It had started well enough.  Khan had been as good as his word—he’d stalked out of his room after only a few minutes dressed in crisp black from neck to toe, equally black hair brushed neatly away from his face.  They’d exchanged a few more carefully courteous words and then they’d been out the door and on their way.

 

They’d begun with the space furthest away from their quarters.  In fact, it was on the far side of the station, a good distance away from all of the more commonly utilized areas.  It was a smallish room, with several long steel tables scattered throughout the space and little else to recommend it and Khan had turned and walked out of it almost as soon as he’d stepped inside.  He hadn’t said anything—hadn’t needed to say anything—and she’d crossed it off the list and on they’d moved to the next.

 

And then the next.

 

And then the next.

 

And so on, and so forth, and over and over and over again.

 

With every subsequent space they stepped into, his inspection took a little bit longer, grew a little more intensive.  At first, he did it all in silence, but then, slowly, the words—the comments and observations—started coming.  And then they wouldn’t _stop_ coming.  As if it was _her_ fault that the ceilings were too low in this room or that the soundproofing was inadequate in another room or that still another was off of square by approximately four and three-quarters inches.

 

And for _fuck’s_ sake…who noticed that a room was off square by approximately four and three-quarters inches anyway?  More than that…why did it even matter?

 

But she didn’t say a word about it.  Just smiled, nodded, mumbled something appropriately pleasant and crossed another possibility off the list.  As her patience waned, she was careful not to actually look at him, keeping her eyes firmly focused on the PADD in her hands—she was keeping things civil; keeping things civil meant not letting him see how very much she wanted to shake the living shit out of him.

 

Now they were down to the last space on the list and damned if he wasn’t pursing his lips and frowning and looking as dissatisfied with this one as he had with all seventeen of the others.  _Seven-fucking-teen!_

“What was that, Lieutenant?”

 

Duval’s head shot up, eyes meeting his for the first time in quite some time.  Had she said that out loud?  “I didn’t say anything,” she lied, offering him an over bright smile.  “So what do you think of this one?”

 

Khan was standing in the center of the large room, arms clasped behind his back and looking at her intently.  Almost…expectantly.  Like he was waiting for something.

 

“The ventilation system was either incorrectly designed or incompetently installed—the center of the room is approximately three degrees warmer than the rest of the space.”

 

_What.  The.  Fuck.._

Duval could feel it all slipping away.  All of her good intentions, all of her effort…all of it was crumbling away from beneath her and she could feel the muscles in her face start to twitch with the effort it suddenly took to keep smiling.  Slowly folding the PADD against her chest, arms crossed tightly over it, she fought to keep hold of her temper; to not snap; to stay _civil_.

 

“Duly noted,” she said, voice as precisely controlled as the rest of her.  “But if that’s the only problem you have with the space, I’m sure we can have it corrected by Facility Engineering.”

 

He was definitely watching her now, those incandescent eyes focused on her with the intensity of a hawk who’d sighted particularly juice prey.  “And you would trust the very fools who committed the error in the first place to adequately correct it after the fact?  No, Lieutenant, I am afraid this space will not do at all—it is, if possible, even less acceptable than all of the others.”

 

A few more cracks in her armor, a little more hard won ground crumbled away from beneath her; Duval wanted very much to look away but she feared if she moved even a little, she’d lose it all entirely.  “You know that this is the last space on the list, right?”

 

“I am aware.”

 

She counted to ten; it didn’t help.  _Be nice,_ she reminded herself.  _Be.  Nice._   “Are you planning to just keep working out of our quarters then?”  _Be nice, be nice, be nice._ “Or is the sofa eight-one-thousandths of a millimeter too tall?”

 

Well.  Apparently she wasn’t even listening to herself anymore.  Not a good sign.

 

Khan’s brows lifted, expression so utterly _mild_ that it set alarm bells off in her head.  She’d never seen it before, but that didn’t matter—there was no way that look meant anything but trouble.  “No indeed, Lieutenant.  I will be working out of the lab nearest to the unused cargo bays.”  He paused and the corner of his mouth tilted ever so slightly up as it had earlier.  “And I have no complaints about the sofa.”

 

“Imagine that,” Duval said absently, too busy turning over the first part of what he’d said.  She dropped her arms, the hand not holding the PADD curling into a fist at her side.  “I’m sorry,” she said with a shake of her head, “did you say the lab _nearest_ to the unused cargo bays?”

 

“I did,” Khan affirmed, still wearing that not-quite-smile and that entirely alarming mildness.  “I believe it shall suit my purposes quite nicely.”

 

“That was the first space that we looked at.”

 

“Yes.”  He paused and the word just hung there in the air between them.  “Are you quite all right, Lieutenant?  You seem rather…disconcerted.”

 

She needed to get out.  She needed to get out _now._ “Yep.  I’m good,” she ground out.  “I’m just…I’m _fine_.  Are we done then?  We’re done, right?  I’ll just go and…”

 

“I wish to see the space again,” he called out, halting her retreat—she’d very nearly been out the door.

 

She’d been so _close_.

 

“Of course you do,” she said, not even trying anymore, sarcasm fairly dripping from every syllable.  “Of course you want to see it again.  Why wouldn’t you?  So yeah…let’s go see it again.  Let’s walk all the way back to the complete other side of this very large station and take one more look at the very first lab you barely even _glanced_ at three hours ago.  Let’s do _exactly_ that.”

 

She stepped forward until the door hissed open, then stood aside and motioned for him to go through, eyes looking anywhere and everywhere but at Khan.  She could see his black boots moving toward her out of the corner of her eye, but when they stopped just short of her, she found herself automatically shifting her gaze up to his, questioning.

 

“After you, of course, Lieutenant,” he said with a deferential dip of his head in her direction and an absolutely _wicked_ look in his eyes and suddenly, like the proverbial light bulb flicking on, she _knew_.  Realization surged through her and a spike of adrenaline fueled fury chased close on its heels.

 

Almost shaking from a combination of frustration and fury, she ground her teeth together to keep her mouth shut, shot him an absolutely filthy glare and then spun on her heel and bolted out the door and headed back the way they’d come down the corridor.  She ignored everyone she passed but she most especially ignored the six feet of stalking jungle cat that slunk along behind her, close enough that she could actually feel the body heat coming off him.  Any other time, she would have made some sort of comment about appropriate allowance of personal space, but there was no point in even attempting to talk to him right then.  It would go very, very badly and far too many very, very bad words would be used and the middle of one of the busiest corridors on the station was a very, very bad place for something like that to happen.

 

So she just kept walking and tried her best to pretend that he wasn’t there until finally— _finally_ —they were back in the small lab nearest to the unused cargo bays.  The second the door hissed shut behind them, she rounded on him, green eyes blazing with accusation.

 

“You did this _on purpose_ ,” she snarled, all attempts at courtesy forgotten.

 

Khan, for his part, was wholly unmoved by her display of temper.  He stood there, just inside the closed door with his arms once again crossed behind his back and one coal black brow arched high on his forehead.  “I did,” he affirmed, perfectly calm.

 

To her absolute horror, Duval felt the faint burn of coming tears and blinked hard against it.  She wasn’t going to cry in front of him.  She just wasn’t.  Because he would almost certainly misunderstand it—would read far more into them than what they were.  They weren’t tears of pain; he certainly hadn’t hurt her.  They were tears of frustration.  Maybe even a little disappointment. 

 

She had tried so hard to be the perfect aide to him today.  She had done everything that she could possibly think of to help him and make sure that he had what he needed.  In short, she had put her absolute all into making this arrangement work.

 

He hadn’t even tried.  Not remotely.

 

“Why?”  She flung the word at him hard.  “I was trying so damn _hard_.  I went as far out of my way as I possibly could to make this…this _thing_ …work.  I went so far that I didn’t even need you to meet me half way—a quarter of the way would have worked just fine.  But you couldn’t even unbend enough to make it _that_ far!  If either of us is going to get what we want out of this, we can’t waste time on this kind of petty bullshit!  Marcus is expecting results and he is expecting them sooner rather than later and…”

 

“…and that is precisely why I did what I did,” Khan cut in, smooth baritone easily overshadowing her impassioned alto.  “You were trying _too_ hard, Lieutenant.  I will own that I took it too far, but I was curious to see what your breaking point would actually be.  I was impressed, by your fortitude.  I never expected that you would last as long as you did.”

 

Duval just…deflated.  Confused and tired and head aching, she leaned back against one of the long, steel tables, shoulders slumping.  “I’m not even going to pretend that I understand you.”

 

Khan moved toward her, stopping at the table across from the one she was leaning on and mirroring her posture, his own for once less than perfect.  He studied her for a long moment, then sighed deeply, running a hand through his hair, mussing it and allowing two almost-curls to spring free and fall across his forehead.  In that moment, he looked almost… _normal._

Worse, he looked like someone that she would very much like to know.  In any number of ways.

 

And _son of a bitch_ was that about as far from what she needed right now as anything could possibly get…

“I believe, Lieutenant,” he said at last and even his voice was different, less intimidating; warmer, more inviting, “that you and I began this morning very much of one mind.  We are, as evidence would suggest, spectacularly skilled at sending one another into nearly apoplectic fits of temper.  Impressive as that might be, it is hardly conducive to the amicable working environment that our current predicament requires.  You wish to salvage your career—I want my crew returned to me; we can neither of us achieve these goals alone.  As such, we _must_ find a way to work together.”

 

“Which is exactly what I was _trying_ to do,” Duval said, not quite able to keep the wounded edge from her voice.

 

“No,” Khan disagreed sharply, frowning now, “that is very definitely _not_ what you were trying to do, Lieutenant.  You were, if such a thing is possible, entirely too solicitous.  You were bowing to my every whim, agreeing with everything I said, no matter how ridiculous.”

 

Duval almost snorted at that.  “As a former dictator, please do explain to me how any of that is a problem for you.”

 

“Ah… _much_ better,” the not-quite-smile made another appearance.  “You’ve found the sharp edge of your tongue again.”

 

“Ok, I give up,” Duval shook her head, expression lost.  “I seriously think I understand relativistic physics more than I understand you—and to be honest, I’m fucking awful at physics of just about any kind.”

 

“It is quite simple, Lieutenant.  You were attempting to be the perfect assistant.  If I am to succeed in this, I need more than that—I need a colleague.  Someone I can trust to tell me the truth and not just spout platitudes at me.”

 

“Right,” Duval scoffed, “because you’ve been such a big fan of me telling you the truth so far.”

 

Amazingly enough, he actually looked contrite at that reminder.  Well.  Maybe not contrite—maybe more regretful. 

 

Slightly regretful.

 

“Yes, I am aware of the irony and yes, I am aware of what I am potentially letting myself in for.  But as I told you yesterday, I need your help.  As little as I like to admit that, it is the truth.  It is not in my nature to admit such a thing, but in this…for the sake of my crew…I am prepared to do whatever it takes to appease Admiral Marcus.”

 

Duval would have laughed if she had it in her—they really were on the same page.  “Considering that’s pretty much exactly the way I feel about this whole ridiculous situation, I guess the only thing to do is say that we’ve got a deal.”  She offered him another tentative smile, this one far more genuine than the majority of them she’d directed his way that day.  “I promise to help you where I can and when I can and to tell you the truth even if I think it’s going to piss you off.”

 

“And I shall endeavor to enlist your help when needed and to take your opinions into honest consideration, even if they do, as you say, piss me off.”

 

“If it’s not too much trouble,” Duval crossed her arms over her chest, brow arching at him, “I’d also like you to promise _not_ to throw me into walls if you happen to take exception to what I say.”

 

This time, he managed something even closer to contrition. 

 

“In point of fact, that really rather regrettable incident occurred because I believed you were lying to me, not because I took offense to the truth.”

 

She thought on that for a moment, then gave a short nod.  “Point taken.  All the same, indulge me—no more throwing into walls, please.” 

 

Another lift of his lips, but there was nothing not-quite about this one.  It was small, but it was very definitely a smile.  “You have my word,” he intoned with mock-gravity, blue eyes flashing amusement.

 

“Thank you.”

 

“You are welcome.”

 

Now, Duval really did laugh.  “Well look at us…being all…”

 

“Civil, yes,” Khan finished for her.  “You are exceedingly fond of that word.  You muttered it under your breath with annoying regularity this afternoon.”

 

“Did I really?”

 

“Oh, yes.  Every time you said it, I was less and less inclined to act it.”

 

Duval snorted out another laugh.  “That would explain why your objections to each room got more and more bizarre.”

 

“Precisely.”

 

They were both silent for a moment, though this one decidedly more comfortable than any they’d shared previously.  It was dangerously close to being _friendly_.  How far they’d come…

 

“So is this really the room you want to claim?  Or was that just part of your campaign of infinite frustration?”

 

For the first time, Khan laughed.  It wasn’t much, but it was undeniable.  It was also one of the most dangerous sounds Duval had ever heard; she liked it far more than she should have.

 

“This room, as I said, will meet my requirements perfectly.  It is small, yes.  But as you and I will be the only two occupying the space, that hardly matters.”

 

“It’s pretty far removed from everything else on the station.”

 

Khan nodded.  “The largest part of its attraction.  I prefer to put as much distance between ourselves and prying eyes and ears as possible.”

 

“Probably a good idea,” Duval conceded.  “Not that that will stop Marcus if he wants to spy—on either of us.”

 

“Of that I have no doubt.”

 

Another silence.

 

Khan reached up and flicked one of the errant curls off his forehead absently and Duval’s fingers itched to repeat the gesture.  Her stomach clenched in a way that it hadn’t in a very long time and she forced herself to look away.  He really was the most dangerous creature she’d ever encountered—in more ways than one. 

 

 

“So far, this is going nothing like I thought it would, but better than I thought it could,” she admitted.  “I honestly don’t have any idea where to go from here.”

 

“We are both of us in unfamiliar territory.”  If that wasn’t the most stunning admission he could possibly have made, she didn’t know what was.  “I suppose we shall just have to chart our own course.”

 

And wasn’t that just an utterly terrifying thought.

 

“Here there be monsters,” she quipped.

 

“Why yes, Lieutenant Duval,” Khan smiled, and this one she had seen from him before; this one was the razor blade grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes, though this time, she felt included in it rather than targeted by it—a small but significant distinction, “I do believe that is rather the point.”

 

It was a chilling reminder and not for the first time, Duval wondered if Alexander Marcus had any idea of what his ambition had unleashed.

 

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing.
> 
> A/N: Ok, so…slightly longer in between updates this time, but as penance I offer this absolute beast of a chapter. Hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! As always, thank you for the reviews/follows/favorites! Shout out to my beta—I <3 you, Xaraphis!

 

* * *

 

_nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals_

_the power of your intense fragility:whose texture_

_compels me with the color of its countries,_

_rendering death and forever with each breathing_

_-ee cummings_

* * *

 

_Six Weeks Later_

“Let’s make this quick, Duval.  I’m scheduled to be on a transport to San Francisco in twenty minutes.”

 

“Not a problem, sir,” Duval acknowledged with a nod, secretly thrilled by that news; these bi-weekly check-ins were swiftly becoming the bane of her existence.  No matter how good the progress she had to report, Marcus refused to be impressed.   “I just wanted to give you an update on the progress with the Vengeance.”

 

“ _Is_ there progress?  Our last conversation wasn’t exactly encouraging.”

 

Three days prior, she had given him a rundown of Khan’s ideas about tweaking the warp drive in Marcus’ intended flagship—a monstrous beast of a thing that was currently under construction in Io’s main bay.  She had assumed the Admiral would be pleased—she’d been extraordinarily incorrect.

 

_I don’t want to hear about ideas, Duval.  I want to hear about results.  If you don’t get some for me soon, I’m going to yank you out of there and replace you with someone who will—and if the Commander doesn’t like it, too fucking bad._

She’d already been well aware that Marcus was an impatient son of a bitch, but she had at least credited him with enough common sense to recognize that the kind of results he was looking for took time.  Apparently, she’d been even more wrong about him than she’d known.  “I don’t have a physical product to show you yet, sir,” she admitted, pointedly ignoring the exaggerated sigh it earned her, “but that’s only because the installation of the engineering systems has only just begun—the warp drive itself isn’t due to begin construction for another few weeks.  However, after going over the preliminaries with the project management team, it looks like Harrison’s proposed modifications _will_ work.  There are still a few details to be ironed out but all signs suggest that, once the Vengeance is up and running, she will not only be able to travel far faster than any other starship in the fleet, but she will also be able to engage an enemy ship during warp travel.”

 

Marcus had the nerve not to look even a little bit pleased.  “If that’s all you have for me, Duval, you’re wasting my very valuable time.”

 

She bristled at that, but bit back hard on the annoyance.  She was trying to get back in the man’s good graces—telling him exactly what he could do with his very valuable time would do her no favors toward that end.  “I’m sorry you feel that way, sir, but you were adamant that he focus solely on upgrades to the Vengeance.  Until progress on her construction allows Harrison’s plans to be implemented, I’m afraid I won’t have any tangible results to report.”

 

It wasn’t at all what he wanted to hear, but it couldn’t be helped.  She couldn’t make the construction go faster, no matter how impatient Marcus was determined to be.

 

“Fine,” Marcus snapped, “you’ve made your point.”

 

She kept her face blank, resisting the urge to arch a brow at him.  “Which point would that be, sir?”

 

“Widen his scope, Duval,” he ordered, grudgingly.  “Give me something real and do it fast before I decide to wash my hands of this whole thing.  If I have to do that, I can promise you that neither you nor Harrison will like what comes next.”

 

It was as empty a threat as she’d ever heard.  Marcus was deeply invested in this project; he would no sooner cut this project loose than he would walk into Starfleet Headquarters and announce Section 31’s existence to the whole of Command.  And Harrison was far too valuable an asset—Marcus would never do anything to risk losing the infinite possibilities that lived inside all that massive brainpower.

 

She was a different story and she didn’t for a second doubt his threats as they pertained to her.  As an Agent, she was fully aware that she was expendable; it came with the territory.  It didn’t matter how good you were, how strong or quick or clever—everyone could be replaced and everyone eventually would be, one way or another.  Her goal at this point was to make sure that her _one way or another_ meant a cushy retirement package and a comfortable house back home in Louisiana rather than an anonymous gray jumpsuit and a prison cell that didn’t technically exist. 

 

Or worse still, a silenced shot and an unmarked grave on a distant planet.

 

It happened.  She’d seen it happen.  Hell…she’d _made_ it happen.

 

Granted, the Agent she’d _retired_ had more than deserved it—there was no shame in putting down a rabid dog; she refused to shoulder even a smidge of it for ending a man who’d been found to have a predilection for very young girls whose throats he slit when he was done with them.  But not everyone whose career ended that way deserved it.  Sometimes, circumstances arose and bad things happened to decent people. 

 

She’d done nothing wrong, as far as she was concerned.  That Marcus disagreed was definitely cause for concern.

 

So she shook her head, offered her superior a tentative smile and a nod of agreement.  “Aye, sir.  I’ll relay the new orders immediately.  The next time you hear from me, it will be with physical proof that your time is not being wasted.”

 

“I’ll hold you to that, Duval,” Marcus intoned gravely, cobalt eyes boring into hers.

 

A moment later, the connection severed—from his end, without warning, as always—and Duval’s façade of the eager-to-please subordinate crumbled.  The bright, encouraging smile melted off her lips, her picture perfect posture slumped and she let out a long string of very colorful curses aimed directly at the now absent Admiral.  It didn’t help as much as she would have liked it to and she was still vibrating with angry energy.

 

She always was after she spoke to Marcus these days.  Which was precisely why she had a bag with workout clothes sitting beside her chair—saved her the inevitable trip back to her quarters to change.

 

Standing up, she shouldered the bag and stepped out of the room into the quiet corridor beyond.  The door hadn’t finished closing behind her when her communicator let out a short trill.  Digging into the outside pocket of her bag, she fished it out and flicked it open with practiced ease.  “Yes, I’m done and no, it didn’t go well.  The Admiral wasn’t pleased.”

 

“I’m glad to hear it,” came Khan’s voice over the device, potent as ever.  “I would prefer not to please Marcus at all.  But as I must, I am quite content to do so as infrequently as possible.”

 

“You’re not the one who has to listen to him bitch.”

 

“If it is sympathy you want, seek it elsewhere.  I find myself disinclined to commiserate with the spy over the vagaries of her master—all the more so when the secrets being whispered into his dim-witted ear are my own.”

 

Duval scoffed, directing a sharp look of disbelief at the man on the other end of the communicator, regardless of the fact that he couldn’t see it.  “Since I discuss with _you_ everything that I discuss with _him_ , I don’t think you can legitimately sing that particular pity ditty.”

 

“And I’m to take you at your word on that, am I?  _Trust_ that you are telling the truth?”

 

She narrowed her eyes, glaring at the device in her hand now.  “Don’t be stupid.”

 

“A genetic impossibility—I could not even if I wished to.”

 

She rolled her eyes so hard it hurt.  “Oh you’re just in a _delightful_ mood this morning, aren’t you? What’s wrong?”

 

“So many things that it would be a chore to even attempt to enumerate them all,” he snipped, sounding dangerously close to sullen, “which is nothing more than any other day I’ve spent confined to this wretched backwater.  But that really is neither here nor there and I’ve strayed from my purpose in contacting you…”

 

“Good to know you had one.”

 

He ignored her snark.  Entirely.  “I require your assistance.  Get here.”

 

Duval sighed, eyes going heavenward as she shook her head.  It was going to be one of _those_ days.  “A please would damn near kill you, wouldn’t it?”

 

“Highly unlikely, but why risk it?”

 

She cracked a smile at that, relieved.  It appeared the day wouldn’t turn out as miserably as his initial truculence had suggested that it would; it was only when he abandoned humor entirely that there was real cause for concern.  “As soon as I’m finished at the gym, I’ll be there.”

 

“Unacceptable.”

 

“Non-negotiable,” she shot back.  “Whatever you need, it’ll still be there in an hour.”

 

“I will not…”

 

“In an hour, Commander,” she said emphatically, snapping the communicator shut.  She slid it back into her bag and started on her way again, determinedly ignoring the trill when it sounded again almost immediately.  She’d like to think this was her teaching him a lesson in patience—the man had virtually none to speak of—but she knew him well enough to doubt it was one he would ever actually learn.

 

She couldn’t really complain though; amazingly enough, they had discovered over the past several weeks that they actually worked quite well together.  They had their moments, of course—he could be the most unbelievable bastard when he wanted to and she could be damn near as bad when the mood struck.  And when they did disagree, it was always a sight to behold—as several very unfortunate Agents who’d had the misfortune to be in the mess at exactly the wrong time had discovered earlier that very week.

 

It had earned them both a trip to Vazquez’s office and a none-too-mild tongue lashing from the thoroughly annoyed Facility Commander, though it had been directed more at Khan than herself.  Apparently, breaking the dining tables was frowned upon under his watch.  Duval had tried very, _very_ hard not to laugh, but to no avail.  She’d snorted out her amusement, which had drawn Vazquez’s ire in her direction.  It had also earned her a rare grin from Khan; palpable evidence of their burgeoning camaraderie and she’d barely heard a word of Vazquez’s lecture over the roar of her own satisfaction.

 

Even now, several days later, it brought a grin to her face when she thought about it.

 

“Now that’s what I call a smile.  Though, considering the source, I’m not sure whether to be charmed or terrified.”

 

Duval stopped in her tracks, eyes snapping up to find the Facility Commander watching her with a smile of his own gracing his handsome features.  He was stood just on the other side of the door to his quarters, dressed tellingly in loose black pants and a sleeveless black shirt.  “Sir,” she straightened, offering him an obligatory salute which he waved away.

 

“Please, Becca…I’m off duty.  Call me Rafa.”

 

She wouldn’t, but she nodded anyway.  “On your way to the gym?”

 

“I am,” he affirmed, still beaming that thousand-watt grin her way.  “Looks like you are too, am I right?”

 

“Guilty as charged,” she affirmed and by unspoken agreement, they started off down the corridor together.

 

“Another rousing call to the Admiral, eh?”

 

_That_ got her attention and she sent him a sideways glance.  The words and tone were casual, but she couldn’t help but be suspicious.  “Keeping tabs on me?”

 

“My facility,” he reminded her, tossing her a knowing look.  “Don’t get too worked up though—knowing who you were talking to and knowing what you were talking _about_ are very different things.  Your secrets are safe, Becca.”

 

She was somewhat less than reassured, but decided to let it go.  The secrecy was at Marcus’ insistence, not theirs.  Khan, in fact, utterly loathed the false identity that had been imposed on him—so much so that she had taken to calling him simply _Commander_ in public since using his real name was off limits and using his assumed name sent him into an absolute snit.  She didn’t much care, but she had to at least pay lip service to Marcus’ plan, so she carefully steered the conversation toward safer, more mundane topics for the duration of their walk to the gym.

 

Once they were in the sprawling and extremely well-appointed gym, Duval gave Vazquez a nod and a wave and disappeared into the women’s locker room to change into her standard workout uniform of dark gray pants and black tank top.  Finding him waiting almost exactly where she had left him when she reemerged in a few minutes later was more than a little disconcerting.

 

“It’s presumptuous of me, I know,” he offered, her confusion plainly evident on her face, “but I figured you could probably do with a bit of friendly conversation.”

 

“You assume my conversation with the Admiral went that badly?”

 

Vazquez shot her a look.  “We’re talking about Alexander Marcus here—of _course_ it went that badly.  You may not be used to it since you’ve spent most of your career as the golden child, but _badly_ is pretty much how every conversation with him tends to go for us common folk.”

 

“Right.  Good to know.”  Duval spun away from him; the urge to hit something directing her feet toward the section of the gym dedicated to boxing and martial arts training.

 

When Vazquez jogged up beside her and then slowed his pace to match hers, she didn’t even spare him a glance.   “I think I’ll pass on the _friendly conversation_ , if it’s all the same to you, sir.”

 

“And we’re back to _sir_ ,” Vazquez groaned.  “Come on, Becca…I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to upset you.”

 

Duval stopped and spun toward Vazquez, eyes narrowed and thoroughly pissed off.  “You didn’t _upset_ me,” she snapped.  “You pissed me off.  There’s a world of difference between the two.”

 

Vazquez, who had stopped with her, lifted his hands up in front of him, the gesture meant to be placating.  It wasn’t.  “Yes, there is.  And I promise you that I didn’t intend to do either!”

 

“Do you know how many times I’ve heard that before?”  She took a step toward him, coldly furious.  “Do you know how many times I’ve had to listen to people suggest that the only reason I’ve made it to where I am is because the Admiral has a _soft spot_ for me?  I’ve been accused of being everything from his illegitimate daughter to his mistress and everything in between.”

 

Vazquez’s eyes went wide and he started to shake his head.  “That wasn’t what I…”

 

“And none of it’s true,” Duval snarled.  “If I am,” she paused, grit her teeth, “if I _was_ the golden child, it was because I fucking _earned_ it.  No one _handed_ me anything; no one ever has.  So _forgive me_ , if I take offense to anyone suggesting otherwise.”

 

She didn’t wait for him to respond, just bolted away, making straight for the benches behind the line of heavy bags hanging from the ceiling.  Dropping her bag with a thud, she tore into the bag, dug out her hand wraps and began twining them around her palms and knuckles.

 

Stepping around her and sitting down onto the bench beside her bag, Vazquez tilted his head to look up into her face.  “I know that look,” he said quietly.  “That’s the look of a woman who wants to hit something and hit it hard.”

 

Duval kept her gaze focused on the practiced pattern she was weaving with her safety gear.  “My but you are an observant one,” she snarked.  “A girl can’t get anything past you, _sir_.”

 

She finished wrapping and took a step toward the nearest bag but stopped abruptly when Vazquez was suddenly blocking her path.  Angling her head up toward him, she shot him a glare.  “What the hell are you doing?”

 

“You want to hit something,” he reiterated, stepping fully between her and the bag now, “and by something, I don’t mean a bag.  You want to hit _me_.”

 

Duval pulled backwards, leaning away from him; her expression shifting from anger to calculation.  He wasn’t wrong—she wanted to knock that overly familiar look off his face.  He was still very much operating under the assumption that they were friends and despite her determination to foster that illusion, she was getting tired of having to pretend.

 

“Is that an invitation?”  The words were out before she had even fully decided it was the right thing—the _smart_ thing—to do. 

 

Whatever she’d expected, she never would have guessed that Vazquez would just…light up.  He was suddenly grinning at her like a fool and practically bouncing on the balls of his feet.  “Oh _absolutely_ it is.  Do you know how long it’s been since I sparred with someone who was actually worth a damn on the mat?  Pretty much everyone who’s here on even a semi-regular basis is so politically conscious that they just let me win without even trying.  The few that _are_ dumb enough to really bring it are such total shit at it that _I_ don’t even have to try.  You don’t care about the politics and you’re damn good—I would love for you to spar with me, Becca.”

 

He certainly was eager; almost disturbingly so.  But again—he wasn’t wrong.  On any count.

 

“Fine,” she said quickly, before she could talk herself out of it.  “Let’s do this before I change my mind.”  She side-stepped Vazquez and slipped past the bags and across the room to the open mat space.  At the edge of the mat, she stopped and toed her shoes off.  Her socks followed quickly after and then she stepped onto the mat, running quickly through a few warm-up moves and stretches.  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Vazquez, also barefoot now, doing the same.

 

“Do you want me to wrap my knuckles?”

 

“No need,” Duval said, bending in half and planting her palms flat on the mat in between her slightly spread feet.  She looked backwards at Vazquez, who was swinging his arms, loosening his shoulder muscles.  “I doubt you’ll manage to get a decent hit in.”

 

He took it as a playful challenge; she could see by the sly look he got on his face.  He was half-right this time, at least—it most assuredly was a challenge.  But there wasn’t much of anything playful about it. 

 

“We’ll see about that, Lieutenant Duval,” he said with a mock-glare.  He arranged himself into a fighting stance.  “And because I’m such a gentleman, I’ll give you the first move.”

 

Duval snapped upright and spun to face him, hands coming up in front of her as she assumed her own preferred defensive stance.  “You’ll learn soon enough,” she said lightly, almost seeming to dance toward him as she shifted gracefully from front to back and side to side, never managing to give him an easy target, “that I make full use of every advantage that’s handed to me.”  She lunged, landing two solid hits—one to his stomach, one to his shoulder.  “I assume we’re avoiding the face, right?”

 

Vazquez, hands on his knees as he breathed through the pain of her first attack, was looking at her with poorly concealed admiration.  “You’re as good as I remember you being.”

 

“No,” Duval disagreed, giving him a toothy grin, “I’m much, _much_ better.”  Yes, it was vain; yes, it was arrogant…but it was also true.  There weren’t a whole lot of things that Duval was particularly prideful about, so when she _knew_ she was good at something, she relished the absolute hell out of it.

 

“Prove it,” Vazquez dared, matching her grin with one of his own before standing up straight again and motioning for her to come at him.

 

She happily obliged.  They went at each other with enthusiasm, punches and kicks were thrown, limbs were twisted, muscles were stretched and bodies were tossed to the mat.  Most often, the body on the mat belonged to Vazquez, and true to her prediction, the bulk of his attacks were dodged and countered with the sort of efficiency that came from having to fight in actual life or death situations with more than passing regularity.  Duval doubted Vazquez had stepped foot in the field for several years, if not longer.

 

“How long has it been?”

 

Vazquez, currently face down on the mat with his arm twisted up behind him and her knee in the small of his back, struggled to turn his head enough to talk.  “How long has what been?”

 

His voice was strained, but not too badly—she obviously wasn’t putting enough pressure on him.  She tightened her grip, dug her knee in further.  When he started to groan, she knew she’d found the right amount and stopped.  “How long since you’ve been in the field?”

 

“Too long,” an unexpected voice answered, dark and deep and as sharp as she’d ever heard it, “if his current position is an accurate indication.”

 

Duval’s head whipped up, eyes instantly caught in the blazing blue of Khan’s gaze.  His face was blank, though his eyes were hard.  She’d seen the look enough to know what it meant—he was less than pleased, but not properly angry.  Unfortunately, based on their earlier conversation and the way he was staring directly, she was fairly sure that she was the catalyst for this latest round of displeasure.

 

Feeling suddenly and unaccountably wrong-footed, Duval leapt to her feet, eyes still locked on his.  “What are yo…”

 

Later, she would feel embarrassed by how thorough a distraction he had proved.  But at that moment, as she lay flat on her back, her legs screaming from Vazquez’s clumsy sweep and her chest on fire from the hard landing on the mat, she couldn’t feel anything but annoyed.  Vazquez, looking far too triumphant for her tastes, pushed her shoulders into the mat and leaned down toward her.

 

“Oh yeah,” he said, face so close to hers that it was making her uncomfortable, “I’ve still got it.”

 

The fact that Khan was watching suddenly wasn’t nearly as unnerving as it had been.  Duval’s hands snapped out, grabbing Vazquez’s upper arms tightly.  She lunged up, the top of her head hitting him square in the chin, just hard enough to rattle him.  A handful of seconds and some very impressive maneuvers later, _he_ was the one on his back and _she_ was the one crouching over him, her forearm pressed against his throat with enough pressure to make a point without actually choking him.

 

“Commander Harrison was right,” she said, jerking her head towards Khan in acknowledgement, “you’ve been out of service for way too long.  So long that you’ve forgotten how to end a fight.”  She leaned forward just a little bit harder and Vazquez’s eyes widened dramatically as his airflow was constricted.  “You had me beat,” she admitted, “but you didn’t _finish it_.  That’s the kind of thing that gets you killed in the real world, Vazquez.”

 

She shoved herself up and off of him, climbing to her feet and then extending her hand toward him.  He took it, heaving himself to his feet with her help.

 

“Thanks,” he croaked, giving her a slightly pained smile.  His eyes skipped past her, landed on Khan—Harrison, to him.  “Commander Harrison,” he nodded politely.

 

Khan spared him the barest glance, not even turning his head, just shifting his now narrowed eyes toward the other man.  “Commander Vazquez,” he said, injecting as little courtesy into the words as possible before shifting his eyes back to Duval.  “If you have quite finished, we have a great deal to do and my very limited store of patience has been quite thoroughly exhausted for today.”

 

Duval rolled her eyes at him but moved toward where her shoes sat at the edge of the mat.  “You’re not even going to let me change, are you?”

 

“I see nothing wrong with your present attire.  Why waste time on something so wholly unnecessary?”

 

“Because I’ve been working out and don’t exactly smell like roses?”

 

Khan shook his head, brow quirking upward.  “Hardly an issue—you can keep yourself to the opposite side of the lab.  It’s your brain I need, not your body.”

 

That was a compliment.  It absolutely was.  When a man with a mind like Khan’s suggested that your own was worthwhile, it was most assuredly something to be well pleased about.  And she was…

 

…but that didn’t stop the second half from stinging just a little bit.  He had already made it abundantly clear that he was utterly underwhelmed by her physically.  Did he really need to belabor the point?  And in front of other people, no less?

 

“What a great idea,” she snipped as she finished putting her shoes back on and stood.  “Seriously…we should just install a screen across the middle of the room.  That way you wouldn’t even have to look at me while I take up your precious lab space.”

 

That earned her an arched brow.  “Mmm…tempting,” he intoned, voice caressing the syllables, “but impractical.  The lab is small enough as it is; I cannot spare even an inch of usable space, no matter how desirable the enticement.”

 

Dick.

 

She gave him a _look_.  He gave her the barest hint of a smile in return, just the faintest up-turn of the right-hand corner of his mouth.  It was, she couldn’t deny, a damn good look on him.  But then, she hadn’t found much that wasn’t.

 

Duval stepped forward, intending to head across the room to retrieve her bag, but she was stopped by a hand on her arm.  She turned back and found herself face to face with Vazquez, a determined look in his eyes.  “Is that how this thing works with you two?  He calls the shots and you follow him around like a puppy.”

 

Of all things, it was _Khan_ who scoffed at that.  “Oh yes, she is a perfectly pliable marionette in my own private puppet show,” he gave a dark chuckle and shook his head.  “Really, Commander…I had was under the impression that you knew the Lieutenant better than that.”

 

Vazquez ignored him.  “Becca?”

 

Duval gave him a look of utter exasperation.  “It’s my job,” she said, the frustration leaking through into her voice.  “For the present, he and his work _are_ my job—my responsibility.  Trust me when I tell you, it wouldn’t be a good idea for you to try to undermine that in any way.  Admiral Marcus would _not_ be happy.”

 

She turned away again, starting toward her bag once more.  And once more, Vazquez stopped her with a hand on her arm.  She heard a growl and for a moment, she could have sworn that it came from Khan—but that made no kind of sense at all, so she chalked it up to Vazquez not eating enough for breakfast.  “What now?”

 

“I want to do this again,” Vazquez said quickly, apparently recognizing that she was leaving whether he liked it or not.  “You’ve said it…I’m out of shape.  I’d love for you to help me get back to where I used to be.”

 

Duval opened her mouth to answer, but never got to.  Suddenly, Khan was at her side, hand clasped tight around hers, squeezing her fingers together almost uncomfortably.  “While I cannot deny that you need the practice, I am afraid Lieutenant Duval will prove an unsatisfactory partner for you—she will be far too busy assisting me to waste her time with you.”  He took a step backwards, yanking her with him.  “You will have to seek an opponent elsewhere, _Commander_.”

 

Yes, he was being more than a little ridiculous; some would say misogynistic, dragging the little woman away like a caveman.  Any other time, she probably would have thrown a fit; but as it saved her from what had been a semi-awkward situation from the moment it began, she was more than willing to overlook his high-handedness for once.

 

“Sorry, Vazquez,” she called over her shoulder, attempting to actually sound sorry.  “But he’s right.  I promise though, if I have time, I’ll let you know.  Maybe we’ll be able to work something out down the road.”

 

“How about dinner?”  The Facility Commander said in a rush, looking seriously put out.  “We could catch up, have a few laughs…”

 

“Sounds great,” Duval cut in, smiling as wide and fake as she could.  “We’ll have to set something up soon!”

 

As soon as they were out of his sight, Khan dropped her hand like it was made of poison.  That he then began to absently rub his palm on his pants, as if trying desperately to rub the taint of her off of him, was more than a little insulting, but she knew it was useless to even bring it up.  They were in the corridor now and well on their way to their little lab.

 

A few minutes later, the door to the small space hissed open in front of them and Khan marched directly over to one of the tables, its surface covered entirely by about fifty different pages of schematics.  It drove the engineers and construction managers insane—no one used hard copy on these things any more.  They certainly didn’t have to also decipher the notes scribbled in the margins of the plans they were given.  She’d seen several of them turn shades of red that she didn’t even know that people could actually turn as they tried desperately to figure out what he’d meant and how he’d managed to work it into the plans.

 

He was already elbow deep in a stack of drawings for the Vengeance’s warp core and she knew that if she had any hope of snagging his attention, it would be now, before he began working in earnest.  “You said you needed my help.  What did you need?”

 

Khan didn’t look up, fingers flying over the PADD he had dug out from beneath a mountain of papers.  It was amazing how quickly he could flip that particular switch.  “There are one or two nuances of the matter/anti-matter reaction assembly that I require clarification on and I cannot seem to find any information in the available literature.  I need you to seek out the foremost expert on warp core assembly that Earth has to offer and liaise with them on my behalf, as we both know Marcus will never let me leave this station.  I am writing up a list of questions now.”

 

Duval nodded.  “Absolutely.  I can do that no problem.  I’ll get on it immediately,” she paused, glanced down at herself, then gave a self-deprecating smile.  “Though if you don’t mind, I’d like to take a shower and change my clothes first.  This is fine for working in the lab.   But I’m going to have to hop on a transport to Earth and then go traipsing around what I assume will be some highly impressive academic environments and I refuse to do so looking like this.”

 

Khan was still typing, though slightly slower than he had been.  “As you will,” he replied absently.  A moment later, his fingers had slowed to a near crawl.  “You…fight rather well.”

 

Well.  _That_ had come out of nowhere.  Duval didn’t know whether to preen or dive for cover.  “Thank you?”

 

“You lack polish,” he continued as if she hadn’t said anything, “and you appear to fight _hard_ rather than _smart_ , but I suppose it should come as no surprise that a girl from the back of beyond would be a brawler.”

 

So much for preening; diving for cover it was.  “What a nice way of saying that I’m a dumb hick who thinks with her fists.”

 

Khan stopped what he was doing, looked up and met her affronted gaze head on.  “You are offended,” he said, sounding slightly put out.  “You should not be.  It was merely observation, not criticism.  Your technique may be…rudimentary…but your results are inarguable.  Commander Vazquez, for one, can well attest to that.”

 

He was being his version of nice.  It wasn’t something that she had a ton of experience with yet, but she’d seen him attempt it enough to know not to overdo it in her response to it, though the inclination to gush was strong.  “Thank you.”  And it wasn’t even a question that time.

 

Still looking at her, Khan narrowed his eyes.  “I find myself unaccountably…curious,” he admitted.  “How precisely do you know the good Commander?  It would appear that the two of you were previously acquainted.”

 

She had to admit, she didn’t trust his interest for anything.  He had shown little to no interest in her personal life up to that exact moment.  If he was asking now, he had an ulterior motive.  He had to.  So she approached the conversation gingerly.  “We went through Section training together,” she explained.

 

“Ah,” he looked back down to the PADD, “a shared bonding experience.  Friends, then?”

 

“He certainly seems to think so,” Duval answered with a sigh and a shake of her head, “but no, not really.  I haven’t really seen him at all since we made it in.  In all honesty, I’d almost forgotten he even existed until recently.”

 

“Hmmm,” Khan hummed, glancing up at her and then back down.  “You accepted his dinner invitation.  That would seem to suggest a level of interest far greater than you are implying.”

 

This conversation was swiftly travelling into the realms of the surreal.  “Why do you care?”

 

“I should think that was obvious, Lieutenant,” he shot back, gaze once more coming up to meet hers.  “I am concerned about the potential distraction of a romantic entanglement.  I refuse to lose time to the caprices of human lust.”

 

Finally, he was making sense again.  “Oh, well…you really don’t need to worry about that.  I’m absolutely not interested in Vazquez.  Yeah, I’ve been buttering him up over the past few weeks, but that’s only because I figured it would be a good idea to play up the acquaintance and get him at least half-way on our side.”

 

Khan froze, expression slowly melting into the look of intense study that he so often aimed her way.  “ _Our_ side?”

 

Duval shrugged, tossing him a smile.  “Well…it’s the truth, isn’t it?  It might not be for the same reasons, but we’re very definitely on the same side here.”

And then…wonder of wonders…danger of dangers…Khan smiled back.  It was all the answer she needed from him.

 

Almost as soon as it was there, it was gone again, and in its place, he was suddenly brusque.  He shoved the PADD with its list of questions out toward her.  “Do not dawdle,” he warned as she took it from him.  “I need those answers as swiftly as possible.  I am at rather an impasse without them.”

 

Duval ran her eyes over the list, eyebrow arching as she went—phrases like _dilithium articulation frame_ and _deuterium injectors_ and _magnetic plasma conduits_ jumping out at her.  “I don’t have to actually understand any of this, do I?”

 

“No—you need only make a recording of the conversation and then leave the understanding to me.”

 

“Wise man,” Duval pulled the PADD to her chest, looking at him again.  “By the way, I know what you can do while you’re waiting for me to get back.”

 

“Do enlighten me.”

 

“Marcus is getting frustrated.  He wants something tangible.”

 

“Of course he does.”

 

“Well, I finally talked him into widening your scope.  So you can finally start actually developing all those side projects that I certainly haven’t seen you working on when you should have been focusing entirely on the Vengeance like the Admiral ordered.”

 

He would never admit it, but his eyes actually lit up just a little at that.  Had the situation been different—had this been a life he chose rather than a life that had been forced upon him, she was almost certain he would have thoroughly enjoyed it.  As it was, she could almost see the wheels start turning in his head.

 

She shook her head.  “Well, I can see I’ve made your day.  So I’ll just leave you to it and go do your dirty work for you.”  She started for the door, muttering as she went.  “Seriously…I spend years at the top of my game, I make one little mistake and suddenly I’m nothing but a glorified gopher.”

 

“Glorified?”

 

She had to admit, she was almost proud of his ever developing gift for friendly— _mostly_ —snark.  She paused at the door, turning back to him with a mock-pout.  “Can’t even allow me my illusions, can you?”

 

“No more than you allow me mine.”

 

She couldn’t argue with that.  “Touché,” she said with a grin.  “See you when I get back.  Try to stay out of trouble while I’m gone, will you?”

 

“I shall endeavor to be on my very best behavior in your absence, I assure you.  But I make no promises.”

 

Duval thought about that for a moment.  “That’s not as comforting as I think you meant it to be.”

 

“Then I suggest you make this as quick a trip as possible, Lieutenant.”

 

She’d never agreed with him so wholeheartedly before.

 

 

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

Somewhere I Have Never Travelled

Alethnya

 

　

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility:whose texture

compels me with the color of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

-ee cummings

 

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Disclaimer: I own nothing.

 

A/N: My sincerest apologies for the delay. The holidays are always a particularly crazy time in my house. And as soon as the those were done, a nasty cold decided to work its way through my family, hitting me last. Finally though, I was both free and well enough to actually sit down and write. The result...another long one! After this I should be back to my bi-weekly (sometimes weekly) updates. As always, thank you for the reviews/follows/favorites! Shout out to my beta—I love you, Xaraphis!

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Ten Days Later

 

　

She was going to kill him. Murder him with her bare hands.

 

　

Son of a...

 

　

_“_ What did you _do?”_

 

　

She almost wailed the words, bleary-eyed and desperate and at an utter loss as she stood in front of the food synthesizer tucked away in the dining nook of their quarters. He utilized the food synthesizer for nearly every meal; it prevented him from having to suffer the agonies of the mess hall crowds--increasingly larger now that the Vengeance was under construction. More importantly, it was the food synthesizer that saved _her_ from the frustration of having to run interference between him and those same crowds.

 

　

Even more important than that, it was the food synthesizer that provided her with her morning coffee; so very essential now that she regularly saw the wrong side of 0300.

 

　

And it was that very food synthesizer that was now a ruined, faceless mess of stripped wires and disconnected parts.

 

　

She hadn’t looked before she spoke, but she knew Khan was in the room--after spending all day, every day with him for so long, she always knew when Khan was in a room--so it wasn’t a surprise when his answer came from the lounge behind her.

 

　

“You are referring, I assume, to the synthesizer...”

 

　

Duval reached out, mournfully lifting a decimated wire harness. “You _killed_ it,” she cut in, not even caring if it sounded like she was pouting because she absolutely _was_ pouting. “Why would you kill our synthesizer?”

 

　

“I was testing a hypothesis.”

 

　

Again, those words. She _hated_ those words. She yanked her hand backwards, dropping the harness like it might come to life and take a bite out of her at any moment. “The last time you did that, I spent two days in a coma.”

 

　

“Specious,” he dismissed, “and hyperbolic besides--you were not, in fact, in a coma. And while your temporary incapacitation was regrettable, it was hardly the intended outcome. It was merely an unavoidable side-effect of my end goal, which was, I might add, achieved to the satisfaction of all involved.”

 

　

Duval turned then, eyes seeking him out and finding him sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the sofa, an enormous gun in his lap, parts and tools spread out in a halo around him. He was barefoot and his hair was in disarray and his shirt was untucked and it took far more work than it should have to shoot him the glare that he deserved. “So is _that_ ,” she jerked her head back toward the synthesizer, “another regrettably unavoidable side-effect? Because if that was your _end goal_...”

 

　

“It is hardly _my_ fault that the machine was in such ill-repair," he cut in, his tinkering brought to a halt as he finally lifted his gaze to hers. “I had intended to improve its function, as per your contention that its performance was less than it should have been. No sooner had I set to work when the entire system shorted out.” He looked away, lips thinned to an annoyed grimace. “Yet another example of substandard engineering in a facility full of them.”

 

　

At that moment, she didn’t care that he claimed to have done it _for her_. She also had absolutely no desire to stand there and listen to him go on another of his endless rants about the general stupidity of every person who had the audacity to breathe the same air that he did. "You kept me up until nearly dawn. You’ve kept me up until nearly dawn every night for over a week. I’m at the mercy of your genes and your genius and between the two of them, I’m just about to the end of my rope. I’m doing my absolute best to deal with all of this but that’s going to be so much harder to manage if I can’t even get...”

 

　

“...your morning coffee,” Khan cut in, finishing the sentence for her. He had been watching her throughout her diatribe, but dropped his eyes now, resuming his tinkering. “I am well aware of your habits at this point, Lieutenant. If you had bothered to look beyond the synthesizer, you would have seen the cup of coffee that I procured from the mess this morning.”

 

　

Duval eyed him for a long moment through suspicious eyes, then whirled around, gaze immediately falling on the cup that was sitting in the center of the small dining table, a warming sleeve wrapped around it. It surprised her that she had missed it earlier; it was all she could see now.

 

　

Such a small thing; the barest of kindnesses. Barely worth mentioning, really.

 

　

Except...all things considered...there was nothing the least bit small or bare about it.

 

　

Oddly moved and well aware that she was in very real danger of blurting out something embarrassing, Duval bit her lip hard and almost bolted toward the table. She lifted the cup, cradling it between her palms as she tried very hard not to be as moved by his thoughtfulness as she was. It wasn’t like her, this swell of gratitude and she instinctively shied away from examining its source.

 

　

They had achieved such a good working relationship over the past several weeks, moving past the stilted civility they’d struggled with at first and firmly into the realms of amicable. It was exactly where she wanted to be with Khan; anything more would just prove problematic in the long run.

 

　

“It is prepared to your liking,” Khan said from behind her, the clinks and clangs between the words a now familiar song in her ears; the sounds of his nimble fingers coaxing untold wonders from a weapon that had already been cutting edge technology. “Or as close as may be--the synthesizer in the mess was not programmed for chicory coffee.”

 

　

Oh for fuck’s sake...

 

　

Apparently he was hellbent on being _thoughtful_ this morning. If he kept this up, she was going to have a miserable time maintaining her determination not to actually like the bastard.

 

　

“You really do pay attention, don’t you?”

 

　

The metallic chorus came to a halt and she turned back around to find herself the recipient of a primly arched brow and an accompanying smirk, the combination far more eloquent than any words could have been. Duval felt her own lips tug upwards in a return grin and she shook her head. “Right...stupid question.” She lifted the cup, taking a tentative sip of what turned out to be a very robust, very dark brew, sweetened with a very liberal hand; prepared, as he’d said, just to her liking. She lowered the cup to find him still looking at her, watching her almost...expectantly.

 

　

Duval rolled her eyes and started across the room toward him, coffee in hand. “Stop fishing for compliments,” she accused. “You know its perfect.”

 

　

His smirk turned smug. “Obviously. But I do so enjoy leaving you no choice but to admit it, Lieutenant.”

 

　

Settling herself down in the chair across from him with her legs tucked up underneath her, Duval chewed her lower lip thoughtfully, his words playing on repeat in her head, an idea taking shape. Taking another small sip of coffee, she rolled it around on her tongue while she mulled it over further. Her eyes were on Khan, who had once more returned to his work, tracing every curve and hollow and edge and deciding to just go with it.

 

　

“Here’s a thought,” she said, pausing to suck in a fortifying gulp of coffee, relishing the burn. “As this is the one place on this heap that we can speak freely, how ‘bout we leave the titles at the door from now on, huh?”

 

　

He glanced up at her, a wayward bit of coal black hair falling across his forehead and over his eyes. “I suppose,” he said at length, reaching up to flick the offending lock away, “that we are sufficiently acquainted to allow for such liberties...Miss Duval.”

 

　

She didn’t know whether to grin or groan. “Yeah...I had something a bit less formal in mind. Though I do suddenly feel an overwhelming urge to read a Jane Austen novel.”

 

　

“I have always preferred the Bronte’s myself,” Khan said, surprisingly candid. “Wuthering Heights in particular has always been a favorite of mine.”

 

　

Duval pulled a face, somehow--oddly--unsurprised that he was conversant in 19th century literature. “I hate that book. It’s a long, miserable read made even more long and miserable by the fact that there isn’t a single likable character in the whole miserable bunch. Give me Jane Eyre any day.”

 

　

Now it was Khan who pulled a face. “While there is absolutely nothing at all long or miserable about _that_ novel.”

 

　

“Oh please,” Duval was leaning forward in the chair now, eagerly engaged in the last conversation she would ever have imagined having with him, “there’s no comparison. If nothing else, Jane Eyre at least has a happy ending.”

 

　

　

“And you require a happy ending in your literature?”

 

　

“Well...yeah,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the universe. “I’m already well aware of how awful and unfair life can be. Why the hell would I want to read a book thats sole purpose is to remind me of that?”

 

　

“An escapist reader, then,” he said knowingly. “No doubt your bookshelves are teeming with dog-eared Tolkien’s...” the words trailed off and she could see a small frown settle in between his eyes. “That is, if anyone even keeps bookshelves any longer. Far more likely that your library is neatly contained on your personal PADD, I suppose.”

 

　

“Most of it is,” she acknowledged, “but not all. I actually have a decent collection of antique books that I’ve put together over the years. There’s something, I don’t know... _soothing_ , I guess about an actual, physical book in your hands. I know I’m solidly in the minority on that nowadays, but I’d give up the clothes on my back before I gave up my books,” she tossed him a conspiratorial grin, “and that includes every single one of my _very_ dog-eared Tolkein’s.”

 

　

And there it was yet again, that deeply searching look; those frankly amazing eyes of his, pale and bright and devastating, were boring into her with so much intensity that it set her heart hammering. The air around her thickened, almost crackling with anticipation and it was such a familiar feeling, like a summer storm rolling in off the bayou and turning the entire atmosphere _electric_. She could still remember how they thrilled her, forehead pressed to the glass of her bedroom window as jagged bolts of lightning cut across the steel gray sky and vicious cracks of thunder shook the old house around her.

 

　

A lot had changed between then and now, but at that moment, she was every inch that little girl, staring breathlessly into the raging heart of the storm, wide-eyed and utterly enthralled.

 

　

And she was in trouble.

 

　

“We have strayed rather far afield from the impetus of this conversation,” Khan said into the growing silence. Tilting his head up further, hands stilled once again as all of his considerable focus was directed solely on her. “As fascinating as an examination of your literary preferences and reading habits would undoubtedly prove, I must insist that it become a topic for another day. You have piqued my interest, you see, and I find myself... _curious._ What would you have me call you, Lieutenant Duval? Shall I follow the inestimable Commander Vazquez’s lead? Shall I cal you... _Becca_ , is it?”

 

 

Even caught as she was in the spell he had woven with his words and voice and eyes, that was jarring. She flinched backwards just the tiniest bit, her lips parting, dissent resting heavy on the tip of her tongue.

 

　

“But no,” he said almost immediately, saving her the trouble, “that would never do. I have seen your face when the good Commander wields that weapon of past camaraderie against you; seen you wince every time the diminutive trips off his blundering, oblivious tongue. You _despise_ that name.” His head cocked ever so slightly to the side, eyes going sleepy and half-lidded as his lips--always such a sharp line across his face--softened into a perfect cupid’s bow. “Is that not so... _Rebecca?”_

 

　

There was nothing remarkable about her name. She had heard those three simple syllables uttered a thousand times by a thousand different voices over the course of her lifetime. She had heard it spoken with love in the soft, sweet cadence of her mother and the rough but adoring cant of her father, with dismay in her grandmothers down-home drawl and with heartbroken hatred in her grandfathers bitter growl. She had heard it bellowed and snapped and laughed and cried; had listened to it fall past the lips of friends and lovers and enemies and acquaintances.

 

　

But never, in her entire life, had it ever been spoken like _that_. It had rolled off his tongue like molten sin, pouring into her and setting every single nerve in her entire body ablaze. And she knew-- _she knew_ \--that he didn’t mean it in the slightest; not like that at least. It was innate, this terrrible, mesmerizing potency; as much a part of him as his astounding genius and imperious ruthlessness. It was purely her misfortune that it stirred something inside of her, something dark and primal and just a little bit wicked. Something that wanted nothing more than to stand before the feral fury of him, throw back its head and _howl_ with him.

 

　

Caught in the snare of his unblinking gaze, Duval knew she should say something-- _anything--_ rather than just sit there, silent and staring. But the words simply weren’t there, her brain as frozen as the rest of her.

 

　

_Goddamn it, woman,_ she snarled at herself, _pull it together and open your fucking mouth._

 

　

Swallowing hard, she sucked in a breath, lips parting to say...

 

　

The high-pitched trill of her communicator shrieked out its presence from the depths of her pocket. Duval had never been more thankful for an interruption in her entire life, having absolutely no idea what had been about to come tumbling out of her mouth and extraordinarily glad not to have to find out. Lurching backwards--when the _hell_ had she leaned that far toward him?--she jammed her hand into her pocket, the combination of movement sending coffee sloshing over the sides of her cup.

 

 

As soon as the device was in her hand, she flicked it open. “Duval,” she yelped, voice embarrassingly high-pitched. She winced at the sound of it and very pointedly did _not_ look at Khan.

 

　

“Lieutenant,” Vazquez intoned, all business for once by the sound of it, “I need to see you. Immediately.”

 

　

Duval frowned, unaccustomed to hearing that particular note of command in his voice when it was directed at her. “Aye, sir,” she replied, automatically falling into the role of subordinate. “I just woke up so if you don’t mind...”

 

　

“My office, Duval,” he cut her off, “five minutes. No excuses. Am I clear?”

 

　

“Crystal, sir,” she responded, frown deepening as she heard the telltale click of Vazquez ending the transmission from his side. “Weird,” she muttered, clicking the communicator shut and pushing herself up and out of the chair, her jump-started brain suddenly working at a thousand miles an hour. She set her coffee cup on the small table beside the chair, tucked her communicator away and headed straight for the door and thankful that she never walked out of her bedroom anything less than fully clothed; true, her hair was a bit questionable as she’d only taken the time to tie it up into a loose knot on the top of her head, but she doubted Vazquez would care considering the tone of that conversation.

 

　

She was very nearly to the door, barely three steps away, when she suddenly stopped in her tracks, the call of duty receding just enough to allow another thought through. “I’d like that, by the way.”

 

　

“What?”

 

　

The word was short, sharp; a staccato crack of sound. Duval turned to look at him over her shoulder, paying no mind to the glare he was aiming her way--the man was a born dictator, of _course_ he got pissy when his position of precedence was challenged. “If you would call me Rebecca,” she clarified. “I’d like that.”

 

　

If he had anything to say to that, she certainly didn’t hear it. She might not be ‘genetically engineered to be superior’ as he so regularly--and dickishly--described himself, but there were few people who could run away from their troubles faster than Rebecca Duval.

 

　

And not for the first time, she couldn’t help but think that really wasn’t something to be proud of.

 

　

* * *

 

　

Considerably more than five minutes later, Duval stood just outside Vazquez’s office--had been standing there for some time now--annoyed and not bothering to hide it. In fact, she rather hoped that her crossed arms and pointed glare communicated to his assistant, who had very adamantly refused to interrupt him, just how very annoyed she really was.

 

　

_He asked for me,_ she had said upon first being told to wait. _He wanted to see me immediately._

 

　

_I’m sorry, Lieutenant_ , the young woman--Ensign Allen, Duval recalled; a recent addition to the Section--had apologized, _but he was very specific with his instructions. You are to wait here until otherwise directed._

 

　

And now it had been half an hour and what little patience she’d managed to scrape together had whittled away to nearly nothing and she was about two minutes away from kicking his door down if she had to. Arrogant, entitled son of a bitch...keeping her waiting here when she had things she could be doing.

 

　

“Relax, Lieutenant,” Allen piped up from behind her desk, large blue eyes brimming with amusement. “You’ll be finished here soon enough. I’m sure Commander Harrison will be...holding your place for you.”

 

　

Duval tensed at the innuendo, the blatant suggestion, in the other woman’s voice. Her arms dropped stiffly to her sides, shoulders pulling back and chin coming up. Her expression froze over, annoyance replaced quite emphatically with calculated blankness. “Excuse me?”

 

　

“Oh come _on_ ,” the younger woman goaded, a wide, knowing grin on her face, “don’t even bother pretending! Everyone _knows_ the deal with you two."

 

　

“Do they?”

 

　

“Please," Allen scoffed, flicking her fingers dismissively and pulling a face, “you two share quarters...of _course_ everyone knows. What I don’t get is why you work so hard to hide it. I mean, my God, if _I_ got to wake up next to those cheekbones every morning, I’d be shouting it so loud they’d hear me back on Earth!”

 

　

Not for the first time during this exchange, Duval wondered how exactly anyone this stunningly oblivious had ever made it through Section training. Either the standards had loosened to the point of non-existence or she’d been sleeping her way through all of her instructors. Because if this girl couldn’t tell that she was about two seconds away from getting torn to absolute shreds then someone, somewhere really hadn’t done their job.

 

　

The younger woman was chuckling, but something about Duval--the silence, the rigid posture, the murderous glint in her eyes-- _finally_ caught Allen’s attention and the wide smile she had been sporting wavered, the mirth in her expression replaced almost instantly by nervous uncertainty. That was exactly what Duval had been waiting for--no point correcting the utterly uncorrectable after all; that the girl had _some_ awareness meant she could develop more. Duval took several quick, determined steps across the room until she was standing directly in front of Allen’s meticulously neat desk. Leaning forward, palms dropping flat on the desktop, Duval pinned the girl with a look of such flat, unemotional viciousness that the other woman flinched backwards in her chair.

 

　

“What we have right here,” she said quietly and her voice was just as flat and furious as her expression, “is a teachable moment, _Agent_ Allen. Now, I’m going to give you a word of advice, and you are going to listen very, _very_ closely. You will say nothing else. You will only nod. Am I understood?”

 

　

Every bit of mirth drained from Allen’s face, taking most of her naturally peaches and cream coloring along with it. Unsmiling and wide-eyed, she dipped her head in a quick nod.

 

　

“Know. Your. Audience.” She almost growled the words, accentuating each one with a sharp tap of her index finger on the top of Allen’s desk. “Are there women who would have responded favorably to that conversation? Absolutely. Am I one of them?” She leaned further forward, green eyes narrowed dangerously. “Absolutely not.”

 

　

Allen’s lips parted, words just on the tip of her tongue--likely an apology. But, to her credit, she snapped her mouth back shut and swallowed it down. Once again, she merely nodded. Excellent...the girl _could_ be taught.

 

　

“You’ve joined Section 31, so I assume you hope to one day be given the opportunity for field work. If you want a chance in hell of ever succeeding in that, your going to need to use less mouth and more eyes and brain. Otherwise, you’re gonna get yourself killed.”

 

　

Another nod.

 

　

“And as for Commander Harrison and myself,” her voice dropped to nearly a whisper, as perfectly and carefully calm as she could manage--she’d learned from experience how utterly terrifying fiercely controlled quiet could be. “I would advise you to keep your speculations to yourself. I would also advise you to tell _everyone_ that you mentioned earlier that they should do the same. I don’t appreciate being talked about behind my back and while I hardly speak for him, I can promise you that Commander Harrison feels very much the same. And trust me when I say, as much as it would be unwise to piss _me_ off...you really don’t want to get on his bad side. He’s not nearly as _nice_ as I am. Got it?”

 

　

Shaky exhale. Nod.

 

　

“Good,” Duval slapped the desk, voice instantly turning pleasant. “So glad we cleared that up, Allen. Now...think you might finally let the Commander know I’m here?”

 

　

She gave a wide, guileless smile and earned a look of even greater fear in response. It made her smile even wider, confident that she wouldn’t have to suffer through a repeat performance of this particular brand of idiocy. Honestly, she might have overdone it a smidge.

 

　

Allen looked very much like she was about to be sick all over her spotless, well-organized desk.

 

　

_Oh yeah,_ she congratulated herself. _Mission accomplished._

 

　

The comm panel built into the desktop chimed, drawing Duval’s attention and sending Allen lurching awkwardly but determinedly from her seat, still looking white as a ghost. She seemed to steel herself though, taking a deep breath before forcing her eyes up to Duval’s.

 

　

“Commander Vazquez is on a secured, highly classified call, Lieutenant Duval. I am afraid I can’t disturb him at this time. Now, I need to run these fi-files,” she stumbled over the word, looking down at her empty hands, then glancing around in a panic. “Um...these...”

 

　

That she was working off a script was painfully obvious. So much so that Duval almost felt bad for the poor girl--no doubt she’d had her part down before their little...exchange. But _almost_ was as far as she would go; if the girl couldn’t work under pressure, she shouldn’t be working at all. However, _almost_ didn’t stop her from reaching out and picking up the stack of files sitting on the corner of the desk and handing them to the shaking girl.

 

　

“These files?”

 

　

Allen, a look that was half-desperation, half-mortification on her face, snatched the proferred files from her hand. “Yes...yes, of course... _these_ files. I need to run _these_ files to Doctor Carlson in Medical. Please...please remember, Lieutenant...the Commander _cannot_ be disturbed. At all.”

 

　

Her hand dropped to the desktop, twitching fingers tapping once, twice against the comm panel. “Do you understand, Lieutenant?”

 

　

Duval almost snorted. Had she ever been _this_ green? Nodding slowly, she fought hard against the smile that so desperately wanted to break through her forced gravity. “I’m pretty sure I do.”

 

　

“Good,” Allen said, swapping the files from one hand to the other and thrusting the now free hand out into the space between them. “And my apologies for earlier, Lieutenant. My mistake, entirely.”

 

　

_Nice improv,_ Duval noted, mildly impressed. _At least she got it together there at the end. Still needs a fuckload of training._

 

　

“No problem,” she said, extending her own hand and grasping Allen’s, not even remotely surprised to feel a small piece of folded paper pressed into her palm. The exchange made, she pulled her hand back and gave the other woman a nod. “Welcome to Section life, Ensign Allen.”

 

　

The younger woman gave a quick nod and then tuned and bolted from the room.

 

　

As soon as the door slid shut behind her, Duval was behind the desk with the now unfolded piece of scrap paper in her hand. She stared at the string of numbers, understanding immediately that it was the code for the comm. Punching them in on the panel beside her, she was immediately confronted with the sound of Marcus’s booming voice.

 

　

... _ask you for a dissertation on their living arrangements, Vazquez. I asked if you knew whether the rumors I’m hearing are true...are...they...fucking?_

 

　

Duval’s eyes narrowed, glaring down at the comm panel like she wished she could glare at Marcus. _Charming as ever,_ she spat internally.

 

　

_I obviously can’t say for certain, Admiral,_ Vazquez replied, and Duval could hear the shadow of her own disgust in his voice. _However, based on my personal interactions with them, I doubt it. My assistant, Agent Allen, has been assigned to casually observe them whenever they are out together in common areas of the station. She believes that while they have grown closer, they are not...intimate._

 

　

Duval’s head shot up, eyes shooting toward the door that the apparently shaken Ensign Allen had bolted through, the calculating look back in her eyes. She had certainly never noticed the girl watching them--clearly she needed to pay better attention. A lapse like that was unforgivable and that Khan was a particularly unique form of distraction was absolutely no excuse. So not only had the girl been successfully spying on a master spy, she had also managed to trick a seasoned, field-tested Agent into completely underestimating her.

 

　

It was a rare thing for Duval to find herself impressed. But Ensign--no, _Agent--_ Allen had done just that.

 

　

She was well and truly impressed.

 

　

She was also supposed to be listening to the classified conversation going on in the next room, so she pushed all thoughts of the surprising Agent Allen out of her head and focused back on the situation at hand. There was a reason Vazquez had wanted her to hear this--she hoped there was more to it than speculation into the state of her regrettably non-existent sex life.

 

　

_...see for myself,_ Marcus grumbled. _No offense to you, Vazquez, but I’m not fully confident that your judgment on this issue is as clear as it should be._

 

　

_My judgment is as clear on this as it is on everything else we’ve discussed, Admiral,_ Vazquez declared, the words tumbling over one another clumsily. Overcompensation; he was lying. Interesting. _Honestly, sir, I know what you could possibly..._

 

　

_Don’t play stupid with me, Rafael. We both know exactly what I mean._ Marcus sounded annoyed now, which didn’t necessarily bode well for the Commander. _You consistently lose every ounce of brain you possess the minute Duval walks into a room. It was one of the reasons I resisted assigning Harrison and her to Io to begin with. Now, you assured me that your...feelings...wouldn’t get in the way. I’m holding you to that promise. So you better hope I find that you’ve told the God’s honest truth in your reports since they got there. I find any..._

 

　

_...you won’t, sir,_ Vazquez cut in. _My reports are true and unbiased. I can promise you that. You’ll see for yourself when you get here, sir. You’ll see that I’ve been accurate. And as for my feelings toward Agent Duval...we are friends, sir. Old acquaintances, nothing more. You can verify that with the Lieutenant yourself when you see her tomorrow morning._

 

　

The feed cut out then and, if Duval had to guess, she would point the finger for it at Vazquez himself. Not that she could blame him--he’d set all this up to let her know that Marcus was coming. She doubted he’d planned to have his, she grimaced, _feelings_ for her put on display like that.

 

　

Feelings. Vazquez had _feelings_ for her. He could claim otherwise all he wanted, but she’d heard it in his voice, the thread of panic, the flare of embarrassment. And now that she thought about it, looking back over all of their interactions since she’d come to Io, she supposed it was obvious. It was also par for the course for her--she had always been as bad at recognizing flirtation as she was at doing it herself.

 

　

Shit. This was going to make things...

 

　

She paused, frowned. Actually...this could make things...even _easier._

 

　

Her conscience, underworked as it was, stirred feebly at that thought, trying to whisper something about it being wrong and inexcusable to use the Commander’s softer feelings to her advantage. The larger, louder part of her dismissed that out of hand--she’d already been taking advantage of his friendship for her own selfish purposes. Would this really be all that much worse?

 

　

The door to the corridor slid open. Duval, who had unconsciously moved away from the desk as soon as the feed was cut, looked up to find Agent Allen standing just inside the doorway, looking just as nervous as she had when she left.

 

　

“Still...waiting, Lieutenant?”

 

　

Duval grinned, impressed all over again. The girl was _good_. “Nope,” she said casually. “I was actually just about to leave. Please tell Commander Vazquez that I simply don’t have all day to wait on him. If he still needs to speak to me when he’s finished with his call, he knows where to find me.” She moved across the room, pausing just beside the younger woman. “I’ll be following you--and your career--much closer in future, _Agent_ Allen.”

 

　

She took a step forward.

 

　

“Good."

 

　

Allen’s voice, suddenly harder and sharper than it had been, stopped Duval in her tracks. She turned, meeting a pair of intense blue eyes, reading the challenge in them and narrowing her own in response.

 

　

“Because I’m always _very_ aware of you and yours.”

 

　

“Are you now?" Duval, who had spent an entire career being threatened by _far_ more intimidating people, just smiled. “Well, I’d be careful about following me too closely, honey,” she said brightly. “I’m the unpredictable sort, you see; never know when I’m gonna stop...or what you might run into when I do.”

 

　

Without another word, she started forward again, turning down the corridor toward her quarters--she had some very important information to pass on. Now was not the time to play this game, age old as it was. There was no surer sign that you had truly _made it_ in this business than to have a young up-and-comer try to usurp your position. She’d done it herself, once upon a time. As was the case with most who tried, she had learned the hard way that there was generally a _reason_ why certain Agents achieved that level of renown.

 

　

And it generally had very little to do with them being the kind of person who would just overlook that kind of challenge, no matter how _busy_ they were.

 

　

Damn.

 

　

Several steps along now, she turned, walking backwards and tossing the still watching Agent Allen a grin and a mock salute. “Now you have yourself an _outstanding_ day, Agent. Trust me when I say, I’ll be seeing you.”

 

　

She spun back around, the grin dropping from her face entirely. “In fact, I’ll never _not_ see you again,” she called out, her voice echoing in the otherwise empty corridor. “You can count on that.”

 

　

* * *

 

 

A few minutes later, Duval stepped into their quarters, chewing her lip and mulling over the sheer volume of new information banging around inside her head. Khan was exactly where she had left him, still sitting on the floor and working diligently on the enormous gun in his lap.

 

　

An enormous gun that was either going to prove their ticket to being left to work in peace or their condemnation to a life of constantly having someone looking over their shoulders. And that was her best case scenario. Depending on Marcus’ mood, it could turn out much worse than that.

 

　

Especially for _her._

 

　

“Does that thing work?”

 

　

He didn’t bother to look up. “Of course it does,” he snapped, tearing his eyes away from his work just long enough to toss her an affronted glower.

 

　

“Right, of course it does. Because you’re utterly brilliant and I am, I promise you, well aware of that fact. But could you do me a favor? Could you just...humor me for a minute, please?” She was standing just in front of him now, having moved across the room as she spoke. She stared down at him with what she hoped was an appropriately beseeching look on her face--she‘d learned quite quickly that getting things out of him was much easier if she shouldered the role of supplicant; nothing spurred him to action faster than a lesser being begging at the knee of his magnificence. Which, she supposed, made him no different from pretty much any other man of her acquaintance. Not that she would ever say that to him

 

　

Predictably, it had worked this time as well--those fathomless blue eyes were on her once more. And with slightly less hostility than there had been a few moments prior. All the better. “Proceed.”

 

　

“When you say ‘of course it does’,” and here she squatted down, elbows resting on her knees, eyes on the weapon and a thoughtful crease between her brows; absently, her right hand drifted down to the object in question, her fingers skimming lightly across its surface, “does that mean we could take it out and shoot it right now and it would work exactly the way your big, bad brain intends for it to work? Or ‘of course it does’ as in it _will_ work eventually, once you’ve fiddled with it for another couple of days and worked out all the kinks?”

 

　

“Ah, I see." His eyes shifted from her face, falling to follow the rhythmic to and fro of her fingers. “So Marcus has finally worked up the nerve to show his face. I had wondered how long it would take him to find his spine.”

 

　

“He’ll be here tomorrow morning,” Duval confirmed. “And as I promised him over a week ago that we would have a working prototype ready the next time I spoke to him, I’m kinda hoping this thing,” she grabbed the muzzle lightly in her fist, giving it a little shake, “will fit the bill. I’d really rather not have to explain to the old son of a bitch that I can’t deliver on that promise.”

 

　

Khan yanked the gun from her grip, glower now firmly back in place. “As I am hardly responsible for your having made the promise in the first place, do please explain to me how your ability to keep it or not is _my_ problem?”

 

　

Duval deflated at his vehemence, assuming the worst. Her shoulders drooped and she blew out a sigh. “So it’s not ready then?”

 

　

For a long moment, he stared at her in silence, expression so perfectly blank that she knew it was nothing but a front to cover up just how much was actually going on behind it. Finally, lips thinning and jaw clenching, Khan exhaled a long, slow breath through his nose.

 

　

“I can have it in more than sufficient working order by tomorrow morning,” he said and there was a note in his voice that Duval didn’t really know how to react to. “Marcus will be...” he paused, grimaced, “ _well_ pleased.”

 

　

It was what she’d wanted to hear, but said in the last way she would ever want to hear it. He sounded almost...defeated.

 

　

No, that wasn’t right. Not defeated-- _never_ defeated. This man before her would never be truly defeated, of that she was absolutely certain.

 

　

So what was it then?

 

　

She frowned, lowering herself fully to the floor. Shifting, she pulled her knees up in front of her and wrapped her arms around them, hugging them tight as she considered the man across from her. Slowly, she ran her eyes over every millimeter of his face, reading every little shift in his expression, cataloging even the tiniest tic and wishing so damn hard that she could just not give a damn. That she could tear her eyes away or shut them tight and not care in the slightest about the fact that not all was right with him. “I would hope that you already realize this,” she said at length, “but I’d just like to point out--for the record--that I’m not any more thrilled about this than you are. I don’t want Marcus here any more than you do.”

 

　

“Hmmm,” Khan grumbled, entirely noncommittal and without even an ounce of conviction behind it. “As you say. Though I doubt your admitted lack of enthusiasm will prevent you from prostrating yourself dutifully at his feet--ever the faithful, obedient lackey.”

 

　

Outright rudeness...that was more like it. This was familiar ground.

 

　

This she could handle.

 

　

“I am _not_ Marcus’ lackey.”

 

　

He arched a brow at her. “All evidence to the contrary.”

 

　

“Well forgive me for preferring alive and healthy over the alternative. I know it must seem terribly boring to you, but some of us can’t afford to be angry and defiant all the time. You can because you’re irreplaceable--there’s no one else quite like you, is there? But me?” She snorted out a laugh. “I’m about as replaceable as it gets and quite frankly, I’ve already pushed what limits I have been allowed pretty much to the breaking point. If I push any harder, I’m just going to get myself into a whole new world of trouble. So no matter how much I don’t want to do it--no matter how much I hate it--what I have to do right now is keep my head down, my mouth shut and kiss as much ass as I possibly can. Otherwise, I’m never going to gain back any of that ground that I’ve lost.”

 

　

Khan was silent once more, eyes locked on her and mouth once more a thin, angry line across his face. He was not pleased, but he was listening--small mercies.

 

　

Duval sighed again, reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose between two fingers. “Look, I know that none of this is anything that you want to hear, and I’m sorry, but if you want me to be able to stay...if you don’t want Marcus to yank me off this project and shove some new idiot down your throat...then you are going to have to cut me just a little bit of slack, ok? You’ve got to remember that one day, you’ll be out of here. You’ll have your crew back, you’ll have your life back and you’ll never have to think about any of this ever again. But me? I’ll be right here,” she smacked her hand down on the floor, blinking hard against the almost foreign burn of tears. “I’ll be right here,” she repeated, “always. Until the day I retire or until the day that someone finally gets the best of me, this is where I’ll be. So do you understand why I can’t keep setting fires just for the thrill of watching them burn?”

 

　

At first, she thought he would argue; he certainly looked like he wanted to. But eventually, whatever internal battle he was waging was won and she could see the resignation-- _that’s_ what it had been earlier; she could name it clear as day now--settle once more over his features. He nodded once, definitively, and she knew that the subject was, quite thankfully, closed.

 

　

Rolling her head on her shoulders, wincing at the way her neck popped in response, she fished around her brain for a new, less antagonistic topic. When one occurred to her, she grinned faintly. “Too bad you didn’t come with me to Vazquez’s office this morning,” she offered into the suddenly thick silence. “You missed a hell of a time.”

 

　

It took him a moment, but after one more deep exhale, he was able to manage a passable facsimile of a smile. “I suppose then that Marcus’ visit was the catalyst behind the good Commander’s urgency this morning.”

 

　

She nodded, dropping her chin onto the top of her knees, only just keeping her gratitude off her face. He was making an effort _for her_ and the last thing she wanted to do was call too much attention to that fact. “He really has been behind a desk too long,” she mused instead. “He put together the most ridiculously elaborate accidentally-on-purpose eavesdropping scheme I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I mean seriously, he’d even scripted the damn thing. Worse, he scripted it really, _really_ badly. It wound up working well enough in the end, but that’s no thanks to him; he made it _so_ much more complicated than it needed to be.”

 

　

And just that quickly, Khan’s mood shifted and she could see that honest, barely-there grin turning up the corners of his mouth. “Is that what took so long then?”

 

　

Duval rolled her eyes and gave a pointed groan. “Oh God, you have no idea. I spent most of the time I was gone just standing in front of his assistants desk, waiting for him to finish, as was repeatedly pointed out to me in as dramatic a fashion as possibly, his _secured, highly-classified call.”_

 

　

Khan arched a brow. “As heavy-handed as all that?”

 

　

“Oh, worse,” Duval sighed, picking at the fabric of her black pants. “The only saving grace of the entire thing was his assistant. The little shit actually managed to impress me--she took the steaming pile of crap that Vazquez had planned for her and played it so well that I actually believed she was grossly incompetent when, in fact, she’s pretty damn good at the job.”

 

　

“Indeed?”

 

　

“Oh yeah. I think she might actually have the makings of a damn good field op. I’ll have a better idea of just how good once she makes her play. You learn a lot about a person based on their ability to plan a good execution--I have high hopes that she’ll at least give me a little bit of a run for my money.”

 

　

“What?”

 

　

“Well, she’s clearly got her eye on my reputation--she made that clear. It’s only a matter of time before she tries to retire me, so to speak. If she’s as good as I’m currently giving her credit for, it should be a downright honor to completely fuck up all her well laid plans.”

 

　

She was smiling. Khan was not smiling back. Not even a little bit.

 

　

“Forgive me,” he said at length “but have you lost what little sense that I credited you with? This girl is plotting your demise and your only concern is that she plans it _well_?”

 

　

Duval shook her head and sighed. “You don’t understand. This is...it’s a _thing._ I’ve built myself a fairly sizable reputation over the years--people _know_ me. They know who I am, they know what I’ve done. Hell, new recruits are trained on my success stories! It’s only natural that some of them are going to get it into their head to try and bump me off. It’s a status thing.”

 

　

Khan’s brow was furrowed so deep that his black brows had nearly become one. “So you would name this barbaric practice--and do, please, take a moment to consider the source of _that_ observation--a tradition?”

 

　

“Exactly,” Duval affirmed. “I’m perfectly aware that it’s twisted and strange--though you’re right, hearing you call it barbaric really does put things into perspective--but it is what it is. It’s the nature of the life I lead; the life I _chose_ , I might add. If it was simple and easy, everyone would do it.” She tilted her head, mildly confused by the look of almost... _concern_...on his face. “There’s not actually anything to worry about though. She may be good, but I’m still better. I’ll have her face down on the floor with a knife at her throat the first time she even so much as breathes wrong in my direction.”

 

　

At that, Khan’s expression rapidly shifted, the concern receding and his default look of haughty superiority taking its place. “I do hope you are correct, Rebecca. I should hate to have to start over anew with a replacement; not when I’ve only just gotten you trained to my satisfaction.”

 

　

“Oh, so it _is_ going to be Rebecca then? I’d started to think that we were just going to pretend that conversation this morning never happened."

 

　

The man was a damn chameleon; no sooner did he put on one emotion than he traded it in for another one entirely. The one that was currently staring out at her from that painfully beautiful face was nowhere near as intense as some he’d directed her way, but there was still something unsettling about it.

 

　

“No, indeed,” he said, leaning forward and resting his bent arms across the weapon in his lap. “You have stated your preference and I shall be only too happy to abide by it... _Rebecca_.”

 

　

She froze, her eyes going wide; the exact same reaction she’d had the first time he’d said her name like _that._ That wasn’t...it just wasn’t fair. No one should wield that kind of power with just their damn _voice._

 

　

Son of a bitch.

 

　

She should never should have suggested it; she should have been content to stay _Lieutenant_ for as long as their association lasted. Yes, true, they’d reached a whole new level of informality--she extended the olive branch just that much further and he’d willingly reached out and taken it in hand. But was it worth it? Was it really worth it when all she had really done, no matter how inadvertently, was to hand an already manipulative man a potential verbal weapon of mass destruction? He didn’t seem to have noticed the effect it had on her yet; to be fair, he seemed to either miss or ignore the vast majority of her reactions to him.

 

　

She could only hope things stayed that way for the foreseeable future.

 

　

In other words, time for a subject change.

 

　

“Fantastic! So glad we cleared that up," she said, far too enthusiastically and winced. God, she was bad at this--it occurred to her that she should record at least some of their interactions, so the next time Marcus got it in his head to pimp her out as a Section sanctioned seductress, she could just show him the footage and wait for the hysterical laughter to start. “So anyway," she said in a rush, putting as much distance as possible between the previous conversation and the current one, “we’re going to need to test that before we show it to the Admiral,” she said, reaching out and tapping her finger on the gun.

 

　

“Unnecessary,” Khan dismissed.

 

　

“Essential,” Duval shot back, holding her hands out. “May I?”

 

　

Khan hesitated.

 

　

“Please?”

 

　

His jaw clenched once more, Khan lifted the weapon from his lap and extended it slowly toward her, turning so that the stock was pointed her direction. “Do be careful, Rebecca.”

 

　

“Of course,” Duval said, hands wrapping around the weapon in the appropriate places. She angled herself away from him before lifting the gun to her shoulder to test its weight. “This is a hell of a lot lighter than it used to be.”

 

　

“As it must be, in order to allow for the intended portability.”

 

　

Duval lowered the gun back to her lap with a nod, head tilting as she continued to explore it with skilled hands and a professional eye. “I have to admit, I’m curious about the capabilities you’ve built into it. And it is," she said with a dreamy half-smile on her face, “a very pretty gun. If you don’t mind, I would love to give it a go.”

 

　

When several moments passed with no answer, she looked up...and the smile froze on her face. She had thought that he must not have been paying attention. She couldn’t have been more wrong.

 

　

He was, in fact, staring straight at her. And the look in his eyes...

 

　

If he were any other man...if this were any other situation...she would have sworn that he looked...

 

　

Interested.

 

　

Before she could take the full measure of that heated look, Khan dropped his gaze and snatched up a tool at random. Was he...was he _fidgeting_?

 

　

“Khan?”

 

　

“Yes,” he barked out, “of course you may test the weapon. However, if you wish for it to be complete upon the Admiral’s arrival,” he reached out and virtually tore it from her grasp, “I really must ask that you allow me the rest of the day to work in peace. You have distracted me from my task for far too long already. I have remained on my best behavior, but my admittedly limited store of patience has worn quite thin. Perhaps, as you are so...eager to please...you might see to securing a test range for the morrow.”

 

　

He sounded as annoyed with her as he ever had and Duval blinked, oddly stung. She‘d thought they were having one of the best conversations they‘d ever had. Apparently, she’d been wrong. “Right,” she said sharply, “so sorry to have bothered you.” She unfolded herself from the position she’d been sitting in on the floor and stood up, brushing her hands on her pants. “I’ll just go...do as I’m told. You know, like the good little lackey that I am, right?”

 

　

He was silent.

 

　

“Right," she repeated, disappointed--though whether with herself for hoping or with him for being _him,_ she wasn’t sure. Without another word to him, she stalked out the door and headed toward the main research and development portions of the station, his reproof ringing in her ears no matter how hard she tried to block it out.

 

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing.
> 
> A/N: Another long one. I’ll be honest...they’re all likely to be long ones. At this point, I’m fairly certain that shorter chapters will be the exception rather than the rule. As always, thank you for the reviews/follows/favorites/kudos! Shout out to my beta-reading baby sister, Xaraphis! Love you!

( _The Next Morning)_

From its inception a decade prior, the Io Facility had been intended to serve a dual purpose. First and foremost, it had been commissioned as a weapons development installation. There, scientists, engineers and researchers-all at the pinnacle of their fields, all very meticulously hand-picked and all very thoroughly vetted-would come together to forge a new cutting edge of tactical technology meant to aid Section 31 in its mission to protect humanity from the monsters lurking in the dark. Every single detail of the design and construction of the station had been drawn up with very specific care; even it's location, locked in synchronous orbit around the moon from which it took its name, was an extremely deliberate choice. Between Jupiter's magnetosphere and Io itself's plasma torus, the facility located between them became virtually invisible-ideal for a location devoted to the development of experimental and ethically questionable weaponry.

 

Concurrent to that purpose, it had also been designed and outfitted to serve as a construction hangar capable of accommodating two full-sized Constitution-class starships. The plan at the time, it was said, had been to construct two such ships specifically for Section purposes, fitted with all of the offensive capabilities that the average Starfleet starship-whose weapons systems had only ever been intended for defensive use-lacked. Financial and logistical concerns had put those plans on hold, but finally, roughly a year prior, that vision had begun to be realized. And far more impressively than originally planned. Admiral Marcus, whose grand vision had expanded exponentially as the Section's scale and reach had grown ever outward and upward, had directed his various think-tanks to come together and draw up plans for a single, incomparable warship-he had named her the Vengeance, the future Flagship of his eventual armada.

 

Rebecca Duval stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the construction hangar, nose very nearly touching the transparent aluminum as she watched workers scurry around the hulking mass of the half-built beast taking shape within. She was, she had to admit, grudgingly impressed despite her decidedly lukewarm regard for the man for whom it was being built. The Admiral could talk himself hoarse trying to say otherwise, but she wasn't stupid. Never mind all that _for-the-good-of-the-galaxy_ bullshit-that ship was being built for Marcus and for Marcus alone. When it was finished, it would be the single greatest weapon the Earth had ever produced...and Alexander Marcus would sit at the helm, directing the course of history as surely as he directed the course of the ship herself.

 

Once upon a time, there had been a warmth behind that image; she'd eagerly awaited the day that the concept would become reality. But now...now it left her cold.

 

Cold and decidedly uncomfortable.

 

Duval pulled back, a pinched frown on her face. Sucking in a long, slow breath, she banished those thoughts-so pointless, in the end, and therefore not worth thinking-and turned her head to look expectantly up and down the corridor.

 

She had never been a frequent visitor to this part of the station, her own purposes generally constrained to the distant housing and administrative portions of Io's impressive bulk. But this was the beating heart of the entire operation-the construction hangar, ringed by the primary development laboratories and their ancillary facilities. Ancillary facilities which included the state of the art testing ranges, all of which were equipped with special shielding capabilities that allowed for on-site testing of experimental weapons; the volatile brain-children of brilliance given its head and, occasionally, run positively amok.

 

One of which was just behind her, empty and waiting.

 

Waiting...just like she was currently doing. Though, she imagined, with far greater patience.

 

Antsy and very rapidly approaching annoyed, she glanced once more at the clock in the comm panel built into the wall beside the door. 0743. Thirteen minutes. Khan was thirteen minutes late and counting. Not a considerable amount of time, but for a man who would spend half an hour grinding his teeth in silent disapproval at even the suggestion of tardiness, it might as well have been an eternity.

 

She assumed the delay was because the weapon wasn't ready yet. It was the simplest answer; the most logical answer. The man himself had suggested that having it completed by this morning was quite the tall order, which, considering his customary surfeit of self-confidence, was really saying something.

 

Of course, it might also have just been him being a deliberate bastard-always a distinct possibility, especially considering the less than pleasant way they'd left things the day before.

 

After she'd returned from securing their access to a range, she'd barked out the scheduled time and range number and then marched straight into her room. Tossing her bag onto her shoulder she had turned around and walked straight back out again without a word and made for the comparative safe haven of the gym. Three hours later, having worked through the bulk of her frustration, she had showered, stowed her bag in a locker and spent the rest of the day anywhere and everywhere but their quarters-she had even resorted to haunting sickbay, shadowing Carlson and making a general nuisance of herself. The older woman had borne it well, for a little while at least, but had quickly tired of the pensive tension that she claimed was making her nervous. She had sent Duval packing with a firm suggestion that she go have a drink in the Officer's lounge to take the edge off. It had sounded as good an idea as any and Duval, who had never been more happy to follow Doctor's orders in her life, had soon found herself tucked into a table in the far corner of the lounge, nursing a whiskey-the preferred drink of brooding-and feeling far more sorry for herself than she would ever admit.

 

It was not a feeling she relished. Quite the opposite, in fact. She had never been one to wallow; to sit around and mawkishly eat her heart out over her problems, be they large or small. She was more the _don't-care-now-moving-on_ sort. So why she should suddenly find herself dwelling miserably on a few cutting words from a man who rarely dispensed anything else, she had no idea.

 

Well.

 

That wasn't _entirely_ true. She had an idea.

 

But she wasn't about to brave _those_ waters-too murky, undoubtedly rocky and with her luck, just shallow enough that even the most tentative dive would result in a painful, broken end. No, better to feign ignorance and have another drink. Or two.

 

When she finally returned to their quarters, comfortably numb but far from truly drunk, it was to find the lounge empty and Khan's door firmly shut, the light shining from beneath the closed door and the muffled clang of metal on metal both clear signs that he was awake...and that he had no more desire to face her at present than she did him.

 

Just as well, that. She was just tipsy enough to have lost a good deal of her normally stalwart internal filter. In the event of a confrontation while in that condition, it was entirely too likely that her tongue would slip its leash and start to wagging-one way or another. Of all things mortifying, the possibility of _that_ was enough to speed her along into her room and into bed before any of the utterly horrendous scenarios dancing around her foggy brain could even hope to see the light of day.

 

When she had woken that morning, he had still been cloistered away. As he already knew the time and place of their test, she saw no reason to disturb him and so she had showered and dressed and left to grab a bite to eat and a cup of coffee from the mess. She'd arrived at their assigned range ten minutes early, not wanting to further exacerbate an already strained situation with lateness.

 

And now, here she was, waiting and stewing and contemplating how much longer she should continue to do so before setting out in search of the giant pain in the ass.

 

"So much for all that _'to be on time is to be late'_ crap," she muttered, arms crossed tight over her chest and hands clenched into fists. "Arrogant, fucking toddler of a man; can't even be bothered to look at a damn _clock._ "

 

 

"On the contrary, Lieutenant, I can and _did_ keep my eye most firmly on the clock. I simply assumed that a fully functional weapon would be more welcome to you than punctuality given the circumstances, though apparently I was mistaken."

 

Duval, who had frozen at the sound of his voice, turned slowly toward him. As usual, he looked absolutely immaculate-not a hair out of place, not a wrinkle to be seen. It was such a vivid juxtaposition between this perfectly polished specimen that stood before her and the habitually barefoot, slightly rumpled and invariably grease-smudged man that existed only behind the closed doors of their quarters and even, at times, their lab. Sometimes, the differences were almost staggering. This was one of those times.

 

Given the time-sensitive situation in which they currently found themselves, she quickly decided that the best thing to do was to address the issue directly at hand and _only_ the situation directly at hand. Everything else could wait. Preferably forever. Given their usual method of dealing with any personal issues that cropped up between them-pretend it had never happened and just move on-she was fairly optimistic.

 

"You're absolutely sure it's ready?"

 

Khan, wearing that irksome blankness like the shield that she had begun to suspect that it was, cocked a brow at her. "I had just begun to believe you passably clever, Lieutenant...you might save me the trouble of having to reclassify you by _not_ asking such patently stupid questions."

 

Not even bothering to hide her displeasure, Duval shot him a vicious scowl. "I'm sorry," she said, sounding anything but, "I must have mixed this weapon up with the _other_ absolutely enormous gun you were working on. You know, the one that wasn't even close to being ready just yesterday?"

 

Looking mightily displeased, Khan tilted the weapon in question upwards, resting it against his shoulder, barrel pointed toward the ceiling. "How very tedious," he sighed, sounding bored and utterly put upon. "Sarcasm does not become you, Lieutenant. I would advise you to give up the habit immediately-it is both ineffective and pedestrian."

 

"Thank you so much for the insight, Commander. I'll surely take it to heart-no more sarcasm. Next time, I'll just tell you to go to hell straight away and save myself the effort."

 

And on that decidedly less than cordial note, Duval spun on her heel and stalked to the door of their range, punching in the access code she'd been given and stepping inside. She didn't wait for him, just went straight over to the control console at the very back of the room and started firing up the necessary systems. He stalked in a few moments later, the outer door hissing shut behind him and though she never took her eyes off what she was doing, she could _feel_ the animosity coming off him in sharp, bitter waves.

 

She only hoped that her own was flowing as freely in his direction.

 

A few minutes later, the walls all around them hummed to life, glowing faintly as the specially designed shields snapped up and into place.

 

Khan, anger completely forgotten in the face of new technology, wandered closer to the wall nearest him, focused gaze examining the faint green glow coming off the walls. "I have become conversant in all currently utilized facets of shield technology through my work on the Vengeance," he noted, synapses firing full-bore and sounding disarmingly enthusiastic. "I attempted to research its experimental applications upon first learning of these ranges, but I very quickly discovered that the available literature is appallingly limited and tends almost exclusively towards the theoretical. Unsurprising, as I suspect that any scientists under Marcus' thumb would operate under a strict, pain-of-death non-disclosure policy, but irritating all the same. I find this particular utilization intriguing," he paused, glancing at her over his shoulder, his face a picture of open, honest curiosity. "I assume, based on its requisite situational purposes, that this is an amalgam of deflector and structural integrity shielding?"

 

This wasn't the first time Duval had been faced with this side of Khan. It wasn't the first time she'd seen that look of almost boyish exuberance turned her way, his eyes bright with the thrill of inquiry; the delight of newly acquired knowledge. She _hated_ that look. Hated it because it softened him; warmed all that cut-marble coldness, thawed those ice-chip eyes and made something in the center of her chest twist in a way that she was not at all comfortable with. That look was the single most subversive weapon in his entire repertoire-made even more insidious by the fact that it was one of the few that she knew for a fact was undeniably and unabashedly genuine.

 

Caught off guard and scrambling to keep hold of her own foul mood-she wasn't going to give in, not this time, not even a little bit-Duval hid her struggle behind another acid glare. "How the hell should I know?"

 

"You have used these ranges many times in the past. You were, by your own admission, one of the first Agents to do so and I..."

 

"Exactly," she interrupted. "I use the range. I come in here, shoot whatever weapons they need me to shoot, offer my opinions and suggestions and then walk right back out again. I've never given a damn about the shields beyond the fact that they're on and working. I'm a spy, not an engineer."

 

A beat of silence. And then...

 

"Ah. Yes. Of course, Lieutenant."

 

And damn it if the son of a bitch didn't look like she'd just knocked his ice cream cone into the dirt and stomped on it.

 

It was infuriating. Doubly so because it not only made her want to start spouting apologies that he didn't deserve, but also set that intangible _something_ in the center of her chest to twisting and clenching all over again. It rattled her, distracted her...and before she could get a firm grip on her suddenly tenuous self-control, her traitorous tongue went and ran off without so much as a by-your-leave. "I could ask...if you want. I mean, I knowpeople who...y'know...know about this stuff."

 

It had come out in a stupid, stumbling rush, the words tripping all over each other in their rush to tumble past her lips and Duval snapped her chin downwards, hoping he hadn't seen her horrified cringe.

_Don't just stand there,_ she barked at herself. _Say something. Fix it!_

 

"What I mean is...if you're really interested, I can ask around. I'll find someone for you to discuss it with. Someone who can tell you what you want to know-give you a thorough rundown of the whole system. Again though, only if you want. It's up to you entirely."

 

Better. Still not quite what she would have like it to be...but worlds better than her first attempt.

 

Khan, who had been studying the wall in front of him quite intently, turned sharply toward her, gaze narrowed, questioning. He ran his eyes over her, head to toe...and then again, toe to head, the pace of his gaze far slower the second time through. Only when his eyes were once more on hers did he speak. "That would be acceptable." A tiny frown settled just between his brows. "Though you needn't..."

 

"It's no problem," she cut in again, waving away his words with a negligent sweep of her hand and a small shrug. "Really. Don't worry about it."

 

Without waiting for a response, Duval dropped her gaze back to the control console, punching in the proper sequencing to put all of their required parameters into place. The silence that stretched between them then was heavy, pregnant with the unsaid. She could feel him draw closer until before she knew it he was standing beside her, his nearness, as always, a palpable thing though there was still a good foot of empty space between them.

 

"Thank you."

 

Her fingers jerked to a halt, hovering now just over the console as she attempted to process those words. More specifically, those words coming from _him_. Worse, he sounded like he actually meant it. Suddenly tense, she kept her eyes on the backlit panel before her and tried very hard to pretend that her heart hadn't just leapt up into her throat. "For what?"

 

"I was..." he hesitated and she could feel him shift, almost as if he was as uncomfortable with this new development as she was, "abrupt yesterday and again just now. And still you offer me your unwavering assistance."

 

She forced her fingers to move, to finish what needed doing before she gave another, smaller shrug, just the faintest lifting of her right shoulder. "I'm following orders," she said simply, "there's nothing special about that. I'm just doing my job."

 

"You are," Khan agreed, his own rich baritone oddly subdued. "But it does not follow that it must be a thankless one. So I say again...thank you, Rebecca."

_Oh...hell..._

 

Duval tried not to look at him, but her head moved completely independently of her will, canting upwards to find him looking back at her with the intensity that she dreaded-dreaded, but thrilled at in the most unsettling way. Her breath caught, her stomach twisted into intricate knots and her entire world narrowed in that moment until she could see nothing but those vivid blue eyes above that flawless bone-structure. She sank her teeth into her lower lip, a nervous habit left over from childhood...and damn near died when his eyes followed the movement, sliding from hers, dipping ever so slightly to land on her mouth.

 

A loud bleat sounded from the console beside them, shattering the moment. Duval reared backwards and spun away, thankful for the distraction. "All systems ready," she chirped, wincing internally at the way her voice cracked on the last word. She hastily punched in one more code and a target dummy shot up from beneath the floor at the far end of the room. "Time to see if you're as good as you think you are."

 

It could have come across as a challenge-hell, she'd _meant_ for it to be a challenge-but it was too light, too friendly for that; a fond, lighthearted tease that bordered on indulgent. Frustrated with herself, she stalked to the back corner of the room where the racks of safety gear sat, slapping on ear and eye protection and praying that the rest of this exercise in frustration would sail by without any further hiccups.

 

She'd had more than her share of hiccups for one day, thank you.

 

"You're confidence in my abilities is truly staggering, Lieutenant."

 

"You know me," she said as she reached up to adjust the fit of the goggles, "always good for a kind word or a shot of confidence. Now...ready when you are."

 

Khan stood in the center of the firing area, the gun very properly aimed down-range as he cradled it in his right hand. With his left hand, he flicked a switch on the side of the trigger housing. "I think half-power should be sufficient for the first go, don't you?"

 

Duval shrugged. "Your design, your call."

 

"Right then." He centered himself, dropped his left hand, raised the gun with his right, took aim and fired.

 

Her immediate impression was something akin to disappointment-it hadn't appeared to kick in the slightest and it made virtually no sound to speak of, at least compared to what she would expect from the size of the weapon. But in the very next moment, that all changed. Spectacularly so.

 

Because half a heartbeat later, the dummy down-range just absolutely...disintegrated.

 

Duval's jaw dropped as she watched tiny bits of detritus flutter through the air before dropping into the random piles of debris that had once been a perfectly serviceable target dummy. "Holy shit," she blurted out, followed immediately by a laugh that was far too bubbly not to be called a giggle. She moved forward until she was standing beside Khan, now wearing an enormous grin. "Holy _shit_ ," she repeated. "That was amazing! _"_

 

"Yes, it rather was, wasn't it?" Khan said, looking and sounding prodigiously proud of himself; smug in the face of this rousing success.

 

And for once, she had no desire to wipe the self-satisfied smirk off his face. He _should_ be proud. He'd taken what had been a failed prototype-consigned to a sad fate spent collecting dust on a high shelf in a distant storage room-and, in just a few days, he had turned it into one of the most unbelievable weapons she had ever seen. If that hadn't earned him the right to bask in the glory of his own genius, then nothing ever would. Hell...she'd be lying if she said that she wasn't planning to do a little basking of her own, even if it was borrowed.

 

She stepped in closer to him though she had eyes only for the very large gun in his hands. "I admit it," she said with a grin, bringing her bright, ebullient gaze up to his, "I'm impressed. Seriously. I mean...after seeing _that_...there's just no way that Marcus could possibly spin this against us-you've given him so far above and beyond what he was asking for that even he won't be able to help being impressed."

 

He looked pleased at the praise; very pleased. "As you know the Admiral so much better than I, I shall bow to your superior judgment in this matter. However, I must confess to feeling quite cautiously optimistic myself."

 

"As you very well should," she confirmed, then took another step closer to him. "Ok, my turn to shoot it." She held out her hands, palms up and fingers grasping demandingly. "Give it."

 

" _Give it_?" Khan parroted back at her, sounding positively aghast. He shifted the gun further away from her. "Really, Lieutenant Duval, where have your manners-and your grasp of proper language-gone?"

 

"I gave them to the dummy to hold," she deadpanned, "and look where they got _him_. Now come on...give it to me!"

 

"A please would not go amiss."

 

"Since when have we ever done that?"

 

"Past behavior is no excuse for present incivility. Did I not offer you my heartfelt thanks not ten minutes past?"

 

Oh, he would go _there_.

 

Duval rolled her eyes and gave a little huff. "All right _fine_. Give me the damn gun... _please_."

 

His smirk turned into a full-on grin-he was enjoying this far more than he should have; she was too, not that she would admit it-and he offered her the gun with a flourish. "As the lady wishes."

 

She snorted indelicately at that, putting the lie to the label. "Never was much of a lady," she said as she turned down range, acclimating to the weight and feel of the gun as she lifted it to her shoulder-not nearly as impressive as him shooting it one-handed from the hip, but that was hardly her fault, "never really wanted to be either-mind setting me up with a fresh dummy? Blue button, top right, thanks." She shifted a bit, settled herself into a proper stance, tightened her grip and took aim at her target. "After all, it's the bad girls who have all the fun."

 

She pulled the trigger.

 

Several seconds later, when she sat slumped against the control console behind her with the gun pressing hard across her legs and a sharp, wrenching pain radiating out from her right shoulder, across her upper back and all the way down her arm, it occurred to Duval that perhaps the weapon might need a few adjustments after all.

 

Also, she'd missed the shot. The fresh dummy still sat at the end of the range, untouched.

 

She _hated_ missing her target.

 

A moment later, Khan's face dropped into her line of sight, thankfully blocking her view down-range and replacing the continued and irritating wholeness of the dummy with a pair of wide eyes, usually so vividly blue, but paled now to almost gray. He looked...she squinted her eyes, trying to focus them properly...he looked...

 

"Rebecca," his voice was rough, strained-and strangely distant, hard to hear past ringing in her ears. His hands hovered over her, oddly reluctant, as if he didn't know what to do with them. "Rebecca...can you hear me? Are you injured?"

 

Concerned. He looked concerned. He sounded concerned.

 

The realization hit her almost as hard as the recoil from the weapon had, only this time, the impact was completely internal, like a bomb imploding square in the center of her chest.

 

He _was_ concerned. He was _concerned._ About _her_.

_Not now,_ she told herself firmly, logic yanking the reigns away from the flailing hands of her sentiment. _Really not now. Focus. Put it away for later._

 

She shook her head, blinking fiercely and forcing herself to focus on Khan's face in front of her. It was only when she tried to answer him that she realized that she was gasping for air, all the breath having been knocked solidly out of her when she hit the console. Slamming her eyes shut for a moment, she dropped immediately into the cool, calm place inside of her that had gotten her through so many situations far worse than this one. And slowly, she was able to ease her breathing, to calm the frantic gasping and turn it into long, slow-and more importantly- _productive_ breaths.

 

"Fine," she whispered, probably before she should have, but she could _feel_ the agitation pouring off of him in waves. "I'm fine. Ok...'s ok. I'm ok."

 

His breath escaped him in a rush. Relief? "Are you injured?"

 

After three more long, deep breaths, she pushed her eyes open, glad to see that his image was far clearer this time around and getting ever sharper. The pain in her shoulder was getting worse, and with it came the spike of adrenaline that she had long ago learned to harness to her advantage. "Yes," she said. "Shoulder."

 

"Dislocated?"

 

She tested it, attempted a tentative shoulder-roll. Pain absolutely exploded through her upper body and she hissed, immediately stilling. "Oh yeah," she gasped out through the pain. "Very, very dislocated."

 

Before she could say anything else, the weight of the gun disappeared off her lap and a large, almost startlingly warm hand pressed against her lower back. He was on his knees beside her now, his face hovering near hers, his eyes on her shoulder. "I can fix this," he said, a rasp to his rumbling baritone that she had never heard before. "If you will permit me, I can fix this."

 

"Yes," she affirmed, teeth grit hard against the jolts of absolute agony that accompanied every breath she took. "Please...yes...fix it."

 

He shifted forward on his knees, the hand on her back sliding further around until it was resting on the curve of her opposite hip, his arm a band of iron across her back. "Sit up. Slowly."

 

She obeyed without question, perfectly happy to blindly follow any command he issued if it would mean an end to the pain.

 

"Enough," he said after a moment, pressing himself tight against her side, his arm still firmly around her, supporting her. "Have you ever suffered a dislocation and subsequent relocation before?"

 

She panted out a wheezing laugh. "On occasion."

 

He nodded. "Good. Then you are aware that this is going to _hurt_."

 

"Oh yes," she ground out. " _Well_ aware."

 

His arm lifted away from her back, coming up to rest lightly on her right shoulder blade and Duval gasped, even that light contact triggering shockwaves of pain. The fingers of his other hand wrapped around her right arm, just at the elbow, the warmth of his skin sending goosebumps up her arm. "Are you ready?"

 

"As I'll ever be," she ground out.

 

And then, he began to lift her arm-slowly, methodically. He also began talking, his voice pitched low, soothing. She locked onto the sound, focused on it, used that concentration to sublimate the pain the best she could.

 

"...key to proper relocation is that it must not be rushed. It must be a slow, deliberate process, utilizing abduction and external rotation to find the angle at which the humeral head will slide back into the glenoid fossa." He continued to lift and turn her arm with one hand. The other hand, palm on her shoulder blade and fingers gripping the slope of her shoulder, began to press and push. "Concurrently, the position of the scapula must be fixed in order to prevent rotation or anteversion, the natural scapular reaction to any marked glenohumeral movement due to abduction." He lifted higher and higher and it began to hurt so bad that Duval thought she might be sick.

 

"Nearly there," Khan's words cut through the haze of pain, giving her the encouragement she needed to pull herself together for just a bit longer. "Nearly there," he repeated. "Ah...here we are..."

 

With an audible pop, the ball of her shoulder slotted properly back into its socket. The worst of the pain receded almost immediately and Duval let out a sigh of pure _relief._ Khan slowly lowered her arm back to her side, then released her wrist and shifted himself around until he was kneeling behind her, strong fingers pressing and kneading all around the affected area.

 

"Forgive my familiarity," he said, his words vibrating across her skin and his breath stirring the hairs at the nape of her neck. "I am merely ensuring that the scapula migrated properly. In addition, your deltoid, trapezius and rotator cuff muscles are locked tight and pulling hard on a joint that has seen enough discomfort for one day."

 

He was right, of course, but it still hurt, albeit in an entirely different way than the dislocation had. "No apology necessary," Duval groaned, unconsciously leaning into his hands, head cocking backwards as she gave herself over to the rough massage, "not if you keep doing this." She groaned again as he hit a particularly tender section of muscle, working it expertly and her head fell back even further until suddenly her cheek brushed across something solid and warm and faintly rough...

 

Khan let out a low chuckle and Duval's entire body vibrated like a bow string.

 

"I take it that I am acquitting myself admirably then."

 

Her eyes flew open.

 

She hadn't just heard those words...she had _felt_ those words. Had felt his lips form the words; had felt the rise and fall of his breath as he said them. Because, she suddenly realized how close they actually were-the line of his cheekbone was sharp against the thin skin at her temple, his mouth a warm pressure against the apple of her cheek.

 

And while she knew that there were about a hundred very good reasons why she should move away from him...she couldn't for the life of her think of even a single one of them at that particular moment.

 

"Well now...isn't this interesting."

_Marcus._

_Of...fucking...course..._

 

Duval squeezed her eyes shut, cursing the Admiral for his timing and the universe at large for its twisted sense of humor. She could feel Khan go absolutely rigid behind her, his hands freezing where they were and it wasn't a large leap to guess that he shared her frustration.

 

"Dare I ask what exactly is going on in here?"

 

His words suggested one thing; his tone something entirely different. The old bastard was _loving_ this.

 

Duval pulled away from Khan, leaning forward and looking around his still unmoving body. She looked toward the door, finding, to her further annoyance, that Marcus hadn't come alone. Behind him stood Vazquez, a deep frown on his face. And behind Vazquez stood Agent Allen, her PADD clasped to her chest behind her crossed arms and a knowing smile spread from ear to ear.

 

Of all the moments to have an audience...

 

She looked back to Marcus, deciding quickly to ignore the other two completely. "Admiral Marcus," she acknowledged with a deferential dip of her head, keeping her voice as neutral as possible. "Good of you to drop in, sir. We weren't expecting you."

 

"Obviously," Marcus said. "Now answer the question, Lieutenant...what the hell is going on?"

 

Duval moved to get up, forgetting herself for a moment and pushing up on the floor with both hands. She let out a soft curse at the sharp ache in her shoulder and dropped back, curling her injured arm across her midsection instinctively. Khan, roused by her reaction, rolled elegantly to his feet before bending down to grasp Duval's good hand, pulling her gently up beside him. He dropped her hand immediately once she was steady and turned to face the Admiral and his entourage himself.

 

"This is a testing range, Admiral," he snapped, his tone dark and seething. "Even you possess intelligence enough to infer the answer to that question."

 

Marcus didn't even flinch. If anything, he just appeared more pleased. "Well I see a gun," he nodded toward the weapon, lying on the floor in between them. "And I see a target," he cocked his head the other way and nodded down-range, "but what I fail to see is why testing that gun on that target required the two of you to cuddle up on the floor."

 

"We were hardly," Duval made a face, " _cuddling,_ sir. The Commander was helping me..."

 

"Oh it certainly looked like he was," Marcus cut in.

 

Khan went even more tense at the Admiral's leering tone. Duval took a step forward, putting herself between the two men and knowing that she needed to pull this conversation out of the quicksand it was currently stuck in and firmly onto solid ground. If she didn't, Khan was going to lose his temper...and they'd worked too hard to get themselves into a good position to throw it all away now on male posturing.

 

"The weapon lying at your feet, Admiral, is the palpable proof of the Commander's hard work that you had requested during our last meeting. I didn't want to bring it to you until we had fired it for ourselves and established that it was working as the Commander intended that it should. If you look down-range, you'll see from what little remains of the target that the first test-fired by the Commander-was wildly successful. When I attempted the second test, the gun kicked harder than I had anticipated and it knocked my shoulder out of joint. What you walked in on was the Commander being good enough to relocate the dislocation for me."

 

And just that quickly, the entire atmosphere of the room shifted. Allen's smile faltered. Vazquez's frown lifted. But most importantly, Marcus went on point like a shark scenting blood in the water. He marched down the length of the room, dipping down when he'd reached the target site and scooping up a handful of dummy-bits. He stared down at it for a long moment and then tipped his hand and let it all fall back to the floor, following the trail of blackened flotsam with an expression of avid interest.

 

"Vazquez, Allen...clear the room."

 

Vazquez, who had been looking at her rather than the Admiral-she'd noticed and had hoped against hope that he would remember himself and keep the concern written all over his face to himself-actually jumped slightly at the Admiral's barked order. The concern- _thankfully_ -gave way to mild confusion.

 

"Sir?"

 

Marcus shot him a glare. "I'm sorry, Commander...did I stutter? I said clear the damn room."

 

"But..."

 

"Get out, Vazquez. Now."

 

Vazquez, cowed by the sharpness of the order, snapped to attention and gave a quick salute. "Aye, sir," he said, and then turned on his heel and hurried from the room, Allen close on his heels and the door hissed shut behind them.

 

Duval was glad to see them go-it would be so much easier to have this discussion without having to gloss over details for the sake of preserving Khan's false identity.

 

Marcus, as ever, wasted no time on niceties. "So the weapon works."

 

"Of course the weapon works," Khan snarled and Duval was struck by the extraordinarily marked difference between that response to Marcus and the one he'd given to her when she'd asked the same question. If she'd had any doubt that she had made _significant_ inroads toward gaining his trust, they were now officially rendered moot.

 

"A single shot did this?"

 

"Yes, sir," Duval confirmed.

 

Marcus walked back to them, expression considering. "I believe I need to see that."

 

Almost as if he had been waiting for exactly that, Khan swooped down and scooped up the discarded gun. Duval, anticipating his movements, took two very large steps to the side, bringing her to the Admiral's side. Wisely too, because Khan didn't stop, didn't pause, didn't even hesitate. The second the gun was in his hand, he angled the weapon down-range and pulled the trigger so hard that Duval was surprised it didn't snap off.

 

And, in a carbon copy of his first shot, the second dummy summarily joined his predecessor in tiny bits and pieces all over the far end of the range.

 

Marcus said nothing. Did nothing. In fact, had she not been standing beside him, Duval would have thought him wholly unmoved by Khan's blatant and-she had to admit-just slightly breathtaking display of razor-sharp reflexes and blistering firepower. But she _was_ standing beside him and so she could tell by the sudden hum of energy almost jumping through the older man's skin that he was not only very much moved...he was almost staggeringly pleased.

 

As she had told Khan earlier, he'd given the Admiral exactly what he'd asked for...and even more besides.

 

They stood in silence. Duval counted six thumping heartbeats-Khan was still armed and Marcus was still in the room, a potentially lethal combination-until finally, Marcus deigned to speak, maintaining his coolly detached demeanor.

 

"So to summarize...Khan shoots, the target is decimated. You shoot," he frowned, eyes on the arm Duval was cradling against her midsection, "it dislocates your shoulder." He looked over to Khan. "I think we can all see the problem there."

 

"You wanted a working weapon that functioned beyond your current capabilities," Khan spat out, eyes blazing and chin coming up. "I have given you that and more."

 

"Yes, you have," Marcus acknowledged, sounding as close to fair as Duval had heard in a very long time-the aloof facade was starting to crack. She wasn't surprised, he'd never been very good at faking anything for very long. "But I'm not arming super-humans, Khan. I need my Agents to be able to fire the damn thing without it inflicting bodily harm."

 

"A simple matter of adjusting the power sequencing," Khan dismissed. "The essentials of your demand have been met; the rest is merely a matter of fine tuning."

 

"We'll get it worked out," Duval added, stepping back to stand beside Khan. "He'll tinker, I'll test and within the next few days, we'll have it exactly where it needs to be."

 

Marcus was quiet at that, eyes jumping back and forth between the two of them, his expression turning calculating. "Hmm," he hummed, that irritating smugness rising to the fore once more, "just look at the pair of you...quite the little united front you've got going on here. It's a far cry from the last time I was in a room with you both, I'll say that."

 

"Necessity, it would seem, breeds cooperation," Khan said, his voice like dripping acid.

 

"So it does," Marcus agreed, all out grinning now. He looked to Duval and she was floored to see the return of the simmering approval that had been such a staple of her dealings with the Admiral in the past. "I knew you were the right Agent for this assignment, Duval."

 

Khan was going to ruin it-she could feel the tension rising in him. If she didn't do something and quickly, he was going to erupt and say all kinds of things that just didn't need to be said. Especially not when it had all gone so much better than she'd ever dared hope that it could.

 

"Thank you, sir," she said in a rush, filling the silence before the man beside her could. She stepped forward, once more putting herself between the two men. "After everything, I truly appreciate hearing that." And now Khan was looking at her. Glaring at her more like; she could almost feel the burn of his heated gaze on the back of her head. "Now if you will forgive me saying, sir, we have work to do and Khan works best without an audience. Allow me to escort you out, Admiral?"

 

Oh yes, she was _definitely_ on the receiving end of an absolute death glare now. She half expected her hair to burst into flames at any moment.

 

Marcus appeared completely oblivious to the sudden tension in the room, still smiling like a little boy who'd gotten exactly what he'd wanted for his birthday. "Oh absolutely, absolutely," he said with a wave of his hand. "Far be it from me to get in the way of your...budding partnership. Lead the way, Lieutenant." He looked at Khan one more time, smile growing even more ridiculously wide. "I look forward to further progress, _Commander Harrison."_

_For fuck's sake..._

 

For an intelligent man, Marcus really was dumb as absolute shit.

 

Duval hurried to the door, stepping out as soon as it opened and breathing a huge, internal sigh of relief when it shut behind them. Some of that relief must have shown on her face because Marcus, who had fallen in step beside her, laughed.

 

"Relax, Duval. He won't touch me. He might run off at the mouth, but he'd never actually lay a finger on me."

 

It felt like old times, the old camaraderie that she had always enjoyed with the older man had sparked back to life as if it had never gone out in the first place. But it didn't feel quite as comfortable as it had before. There was something...lacking.

 

"You're a hell of a lot more confident about that than I am, sir."

 

Marcus laughed again. "Always such a worrier," he said, and the playful familiarity in his tone-once so coveted-now made her vaguely uncomfortable. "Don't forget, Duval...I've got that man's balls in a vice. A very big, very effective vice. Feel free to remind him of that if he steps so much as a toe out of line...you'll be amazed at the results."

 

It took everything she had in her to crack the wide smile that she knew Marcus expected. The very last thing she felt like doing at that moment was smiling. "That's an excellent suggestion, sir. I will definitely keep it in mind."

 

"You do that, Duval." Marcus stopped and turned to look at her. "I gave you a world of shit, didn't I, Lieutenant?"

 

She'd always been honest with him in the past; she saw no point in stopping now. Of course, it never hurt to temper the truth just a smidge. "A bit, sir, yes."

 

The Admiral reached out and dropped his hand on her shoulder-the uninjured one, thankfully. "I won't apologize, because I think we both know you fucked up. But I've gotta tell you, Duval...you turned it around when I was positive you couldn't. Keep it up-keep getting me these kind of results-and I guarantee there will be a promotion waiting on the other side of this assignment."

_Just keep smiling_ , she told herself firmly. _Just keep smiling._

 

"I'll hold you to that, sir."

 

Marcus gave her shoulder a firm squeeze. "I know you will, Lieutenant. Now get on back in there...I know my way. Time to go smooth Vazquez's ruffled feathers."

 

"Will you be staying on Io for long, sir?"

 

"Nope. Quick trip this time. I'll be headed back to Earth within the hour."

 

Well thank goodness for small mercies. At least the son of a bitch wasn't planning to make an extended visit. "When would you like me to get back in touch with you, sir? Are we going to keep to the twice-a-week schedule?"

 

"No need," Marcus shook his head. "I've seen all I needed to see. When you have progress to report, report it. If I need to speak to you in the interim, I know where to find you."

 

"Aye, sir."

 

"As you were, Lieutenant."

 

And then Marcus was gone, strolling off down the corridor and whistling.

 

Duval stood, watching him go and feeling...off. There was no other way to describe it, she just felt off. She should, by all rights, be over the moon. She'd somehow managed to get herself back into the Admiral's good graces, which was exactly where she had always wanted to be.

 

But it wasn't like before. It didn't feel as good as it had before.

 

Once Marcus was out of sight, she turned and walked the short distance back to the test range, pausing outside the door. Sucking in a deep, fortifying breath, she let it out slowly, wincing as it sent a twinge of pain through her shoulder-she was going to have to make a trip to sickbay later and see what Carlson could do about the lingering pain.

 

When she walked back in, Khan was standing exactly where she had left him, shoulders a tense line and hands clenched into fists at his side; a picture of frustrated fury. She wracked her brain for something to say, uncertain of the direction all that anger was pointed.

 

"Why so hesitant, _Lieutenant_?" His voice was cold, hard and absolutely drenched in disdain. "I would expect to see you _glowing_ with satisfaction at having reclaimed your coveted role as the Admiral's lapdog."

 

That stung. And far more than it likely should have. Any other day, she might have snapped right back at him and given him the fight that he so clearly wanted. But her shoulder ached and she was just...tired.

 

"You heard all of that then?"

 

His head snapped around to her, his expression as closed off as it had ever been. "Every word-said and unsaid."

 

She sighed, her hand coming up to scrub at her eyes. "We discussed this," she said and even her voice sounded tired. "Yesterday morning, I _told_ you how it would have to go. He is my superior officer and this is my life. I was just..."

 

"Doing your job," Khan finished for her, sneering the words. "Yes, I know. I _remember_. And you do it well, Lieutenant Duval. I eagerly await hearing your particular version of Marcus' favorite threat. Tell me, how will _you_ go about using the people I love as leverage against me?"

 

He couldn't have made that hurt more if he'd tried. And the fact that it _did_ hurt just set her already spiraling world view spinning even faster.

 

Duval's feet were moving before she even realized that she wanted them to, carrying her over to stand directly in front of him. She tilted her head back, meeting his icy gaze head on. "I'm gonna say this one time and only one time, so you listen to me and you listen _good_. I am many things, Khan...some of them good, most of them not so good. I am, as you've so often pointed out, a paid liar. I've done terrible things to equally as terrible people and even worse things to good people because I do my job and I follow the orders I'm given and I don't question them. I don't make friends and I don't make promises because the nature of my life means that I'm never going to be able to keep either of them. But right here, right now I'm going to break my own rule. I'm going to make you a promise and you are going to believe me because, for whatever reason, I've never lied to you and I don't _want_ to lie to you."

 

She leaned toward him, putting every ounce of sincerity she possessed into her eyes. "I will never use your people against you. _Ever_. Tarnished as it might be, you have my word on that-Marcus and his piss poor suggestions be damned."

 

Khan stared down at her, eyes searching hers. She let him, refusing to look away despite the fact that she felt flayed open beneath the force of his gaze. She didn't blink...barely breathed...waiting for him to either believe her or not.

 

Just as she was about to lose her nerve and give it up for a lost cause, he simply...deflated. The tension broke, his shoulders dropped and his head dipped down toward hers ever so slightly. He let out a long breath, almost a sigh and gave a brief, sharp nod, the chill in his eyes receding.

 

Duval swallowed hard, her throat having gone bone dry. "You believe me?"

 

She needed the confirmation-couldn't let herself believe the evidence of her eyes.

 

"Yes."

 

One word. One tiny word. And it set her heart to hammering so hard in her chest that she worried she might crack a rib.

 

"Thank you, Khan."

 

Silence fell between them then, a stilted slightly awkward but still oddly comfortable silence. For several long moments, neither of them braved it, just let it lay there. But all things must come to an end and eventually, Khan lifted his head, drawing himself back to his full height. The look he sent her way now though was warmer but still reserved.

 

"How is your shoulder?"

 

"Hurts," she admitted, her good hand coming up to rub at the offending appendage gingerly, "but nothing like before."

 

"I will better remember, in future, the target user of these weapons I am building with far greater accuracy than I did this one."

 

She knew him well enough to recognize an apology when she heard one. She offered him a tentative smile. "Probably a good idea. I don't particularly want to play this scene again."

 

"Nor do I." He stepped away and around her, lifting the gun from the floor. "I was not merely posturing for Marcus' benefit, by the way. It will be a fix easily made."

 

"Good," she let her smile get a little wider, "because I still really want to shoot that gun."

 

When Khan returned the smile with that tiny uptilt of his own lips, she felt at least some of the wrongness she'd felt since leaving Marcus turn right once again. Part of her was scared to death of that. The rest of her decided just to go with it-just once, just for a little bit.

 

Just for today, the scary bits could wait.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing.
> 
> A/N: As always, thank you for the reviews/follows/favorites! Shout out to my beta—love you, Xaraphis!

**Somewhere I Have Never Travelled**

**Alethnya**

 

 

_nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals_

_the power of your intense fragility:whose texture_

_compels me with the color of its countries,_

_rendering death and forever with each breathing_

_-ee cummings_

 

 

 

(4 _weeks later)_

  

When a then 24 year old Rebecca Duval had joined Section 31 as a fresh-faced Academy graduate, she really hadn’t had a clue what she was getting herself into.  In fact, for a long time, she was convinced that someone had made a mistake somewhere; that the offer had been intended for some _other_ Rebecca Duval.  Likely one who _hadn’t_ spent the bulk of her Academy career buried in the middle of the academic pile. 

  

Because, in all honesty, there had been nothing the least bit noteworthy about her.  She’d had friends but hadn’t been particularly popular; had gotten good marks, but hadn’t excelled in any one subject.  True, she’d always been better than most of her peers at the physical aspects of Academy training, but even there she had fallen just shy of top of the class.  She had graduated from the Academy with a major in Exoarchaeology, an assignment to the _Antares_ and the expectation of a satisfying—if mediocre—career.

  

So when Admiral Alexander Marcus himself had strolled into her dorm room the night after her commencement, all easy smiles and tantalizing offers, she had been equal parts star-struck and dumbstruck.  She had also accepted his offer immediately and without even a breath of hesitation. 

  

Because she wasn’t a prodigy.  She wasn’t a trailblazer.  She wasn’t even all that ambitious--at least, not compared to cadets at the top of the pile who had mapped out their entire careers before they’d even received their Academy acceptance notifications.  But what she _was—_ andemphatically so—was an opportunist.  An entirely unrepentant and utterly bare-faced opportunist who didn’t care in the slightest that there were far more qualified candidates that the Admiral should, by rights, have approached with his offer.

 

Some might have voiced the questions; asked the Admiral for reasons and details and all manner of explanations.  But not her.  Partly because she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know the answers.  Mostly because she really didn’t care _why_ he had chosen her, only that he _had_ and that she was going to take full advantage of that fact.

 

And she had.  She had taken the opportunity and absolutely _run_ with it.

 

From the moment she had slung her bag over her shoulder and trotted off at Marcus’ heels, Rebecca Duval had lived a whirlwind of a life.  Where once she had been content to hover in the middle, in her Section training she absolutely _thrived._ She observed and she listened and she learned and before she knew it, she was the one that was held up as an example for others to follow.  The one instructors praised.  The one on top of the pile for once.

 

The drive to succeed that seemed to taper off in so many of her peers once the training had been completed, never lessened in the slightest for her.  She was, as Admiral Marcus himself pointed out on numerous occasions, a natural.  Her aptitude for the job was recognized early and often and the slow trickle of assignments that faced every rookie had turned to a steady flow and then, almost before she knew it, had become an absolute torrent.  No sooner would she complete one assignment than the next one was thrown her way—and with each came a new name, a new history and always, inevitably, a new place.  In ten years, she had never called any one location—city, country, _planet_ even--home for more than a handful of weeks at a time.

 

It had never stopped her from keeping her own apartment, despite the fact that she had rarely gotten the opportunity to spend any real amount of time in any of them.  Because the time spent wasn’t the point, in the end.  The point was to try to find someplace of her own.  Some place where she could be completely and unrepentantly _herself_ for at least a little while.

 

True, there were some assignments that took months—deep cover jobs that required her to dig in and put up a truly legitimate front—but she didn’t count that.  She couldn’t count that.  Because whoever she was over the course of those months, it wasn’t Rebecca Duval.  It was someone else entirely.

 

And, in general, she loved the constant movement.  Really she did.  She had seen so much, traveled so widely and experienced a way of life that very few could ever claim to match and she _reveled_ in it.  For a girl who had spent the first half of her life in such a small area surrounded by so few, it was better than anything she had dared imagine when she’d packed her bags and run off to chase the dream of a life in Starfleet.

 

Running, running...always running.  Her life, in a nutshell.

 

She had run so hard and so fast for so long that the very concept of standing still—of being _settled_ \--had become unthinkable.

 

Yet, when she woke up one morning and realized that _she--_ Rebecca Duval--had been living on Io for nearly three months together, it felt oddly... _good_.  Comfortable even.  The room around her had become _familiar_ in a way that she had forgotten was even possible _,_ chock full of bits and pieces that belonged to her and were truly and honestly hers.  For once in her adult life, she was consistently surrounded by her _own_ life on a daily basis rather than the assumed life of a fictitious identity.

 

It was...freeing.  Somehow—strangely—it was even _reassuring._ Being settled, finding a constant rhythm to live her life by—she was finding that she loved it equally as much, though in an entirely different way.  Were there days when she missed the action?  The pulse-pounding drumbeat of a life lived on the knife’s edge, with death and danger nipping at her heels and adrenaline spiking through her veins?

  

_Absolutely_.

  

But it was only every once in a while, usually during her quietest moments—those rare times when Khan would secret himself away in his room working on who-knew-what and she was left entirely to her own devices.  In those moments, she could feel it, like an itch just beneath her skin; those darker yearnings prodding and pulling at her with insidious, spectral fingers.  But then Khan would sweep into the room like the mad, magnificent whirlwind that he was and all those clandestine urges would simply evaporate; gone as if they’d never existed in the first place. 

  

Because she had never, in the whole of her life, encountered any person, place or thing that caught, kept and _consumed_ her attention in the way that Khan Noonien Singh did.

  

It had been that way from the beginning, though she hadn’t realized it at the time.  From the minute she’d laid eyes on him in Marcus’ office, she’d been hard pressed to look anywhere else.  In the beginning, it had seemed only natural to look at him to the exclusion of all else—an unavoidable result of mutual suspicion and forced cooperation.  It had, after all, been the entire point of her being put on this assignment.

  

But then things had slowly begun to change.  Grudging coexistence had given way to tentative acceptance and she had found herself actually _liking_ him and suspecting that the feeling went both ways.

  

And then came the test range...and it had all changed again.  Really changed.

  

_Palpably_ changed.

  

The month that had passed since that morning had been so different than what had come before.  Things had been easier.  More comfortable.  _Better_.  Conversation flowed more freely; their camaraderie suddenly feeling like a true choice rather than a necessity.  Khan, in particular, was far more at ease in her presence than he had ever been before; due in large part, she knew, to the promise she had made him.  Her impassioned refusal to use his crew as pawns in Marcus’ game had gone a long way toward earning his now vastly expanded trust.  For her part, it was the fact that he’d believed her, that he had taken her word and trusted in it...

 

Simply put, she wasn’t accustomed to it; hadn’t been even _before_ she joined the Section.  So that he had accepted her word as truth as readily as he had...well, it had been more than enough to pave the way with her.

  

And she had meant it.  Every word.  Vehemently.

  

She could understand why Marcus was doing what he was doing; could see the sound strategy behind the plan.  But that didn’t mean she had to like it.  She had tried not to let it bother her, but the more she learned of Khan...the more she came to _know_ him...the harder it became to silence the voice in her head telling her how wrong it was. 

  

Not that her disapproval meant anything.  It certainly wouldn’t change the situation.  Like it or not, the Admiral had his plan and he was sticking to it.  She might have regained his respect—for what _that_ was worth, ephemeral as it seemed to be—but she was never going to be able to change his mind now it was made up.

  

The best she could do—the best _they_ could do—was to continue to appease the man.  To continue to give him what he wanted and keep him happy.  And that was exactly what they had done.

  

Ever since that day at the range, they had put their heads together and between his genius and her insight into the gaps in Starfleet defensive capabilities, they had managed to provide the Admiral with a continuously expanding arsenal of ground-breaking weapons.  Between them, they were taking enormous strides toward providing Marcus with the militarized Starfleet that he dreamed of.

 

And with every step they took toward making that dream a reality, the more aware Duval became of just how timely it might turn out to be in the end.  Chatter was increasing, rumors of an ever-encroaching Klingon presence in Federation space spreading through the Section like wildfire.  She heard fellow Agents discussing it in the mess, eager voices trading stories of smuggling and thievery and murder.  Marcus had been particularly vocal on the subject during their subsequent exchanges, telling her in no uncertain terms that all signs were starting to point toward one inevitable conclusion.

 

War. 

 

It was coming and there was nothing to be done about it.  They needed to be ready, they needed to be prepared.  They needed more weapons.  Better weapons.  More powerful weapons.

 

More, more, more.

 

The Vengeance was, as always, the central figure in Marcus’ concerns.  But in that, as in everything else, Khan had proven his worth a million times over, satisfying even the Admiral’s gluttonous appetite.  Under Khan’s ministrations—the plan finalized only the week before—the warp capabilities of the ship had been upgraded, allowing for--he postulated--up to three times the speed of any existing Starship.  The meeting where he had presented the idea to the project engineers was one that Duval knew she would never forget.  At first, they had looked at him like he was insane, but then, as he had spoken and presented them with his careful calculations, she could see the excitement gather on their faces until, by the end, they were looking at him with something like awe.

  

She understood the feeling.  Far too well.

  

It was the Vengeance that had Khan occupied at present, perched on the edge of his chair and hunched over an assortment of PADDs and papers organized in his own haphazard way on the long steel table in his favorite corner of their lab.  He had been quiet most of the morning and afternoon, pausing only when she had shoved food or drink under his nose and then only long enough to gulp down the proffered sustenance before diving right back into his work.

  

Duval, whose presence on days like these was more habitual than necessary, had spent the time with her nose buried in a book and a cup of coffee from the newly installed—and already heavily overworked—synthesizer steaming away beside her.  This one, like the once again blessedly functional one in their quarters, owed a great deal to Khan’s masterful tinkering.  It had taken a bit of doing to get clearance for the installation of one in their lab, but it was a long, _long_ walk from there to the nearest food source and she had been determined.  She had dragged the Facility Commander out to their lab and, with a few well-placed smiles and the liberal application of charm, she had talked her way into a signed requisition form. 

  

Poor Vazquez.  She almost felt sorry for him. 

  

However, he hadn’t seemed particularly bothered by the fact that she knew he had feelings for her and he had been pleasant enough about her using that knowledge to her advantage that she had begun to suspect that he was actually happy about her knowing.  Indeed, he had almost seemed to enjoy it.  By the time she had achieved her objective, the Facility Commander had been smiling widely and babbling on about sending his best installation technicians along with the equipment when it arrived.  But Khan, who had been entrenched in his corner and pretending to ignore them entirely while he seethed in silent annoyance, had spoken up then, adamant in his refusal.

  

_Having seen the quality of work deemed acceptable on this station,_ he had sneered, _you may direct your technicians decidedly elsewhere._   _Send the machine and nothing else, Commander.  I will install it myself._

  

The next time she had been ambushed by Vazquez in the gym, he had harped on the subject with impugnity--boring the shit out of her in the process, though she’d done her best to hide it.  He had called Khan—Commander Harrison to him—an arrogant prick, amongst other, even more colorful things.

  

He was.  In fact, he was that and so much worse besides, so Duval hadn’t bothered to argue the point—though she’d desperately wanted to point out that Khan’s arrogance in this case was at least mitigated by the fact that he actually _had_ installed the synthesizer far better than any of the station techs would have.  But there was no point in actually saying it.  Vazquez didn’t like Khan anymore than Khan liked him.  Whenever he could, he made a rather too obvious point of criticizing Commander John Harrison loudly and long.  So much so that even _she—_ chronically single, tragically oblivious and emotionally stunted as she was—could recognize it for what it was.

  

Jealousy, she found, could be a profoundly unattractive look on a man.  Especially a man that one had absolutely no interest in romantically.

 

Now, under different circumstances...on a _different_ man...

 

No.

 

Just...no.

 

Suddenly realizing that she had been reading the same line of text for the past ten minutes while her mind wandered, Duval sat up straighter in her chair and reached out to grab her cup of coffee off the table.  She lifted the perfectly brewed chicory to her lips and took a large sip, wincing a little.  It had gone cold while she’d been busy woolgathering.  A shame that—it really was a damn near perfect cup of coffee.  Another act of kindness from a man that she'd once doubted even understood the word--another reason for her to catch herself thinking the most inconvenient and inappropriate thoughts...

 

Best not to dwell on that.  These days, there were a lot of things she tried not to think on too long or hard.

 

“Are you planning to be at this all night?” 

 

She waited after asking the question, but no answer appeared forthcoming--she’d bet money he hadn’t even realized she’d spoken.  When he was this focused, it was damn near impossible to draw his attention for even the simplest conversation.  But it had been too quiet for too long and her thoughts were starting to run away from her.  She needed a distraction.

 

“Commander?”

 

Still nothing.  Duval sighed, dropping her book onto the tabletop beside her and shoving up and out of her chair.  She walked over to him, the width of his work station between them, and propped her hip against the edge, her arms instinctively crossing over her chest.

 

“ _Khan_!”

 

She didn’t like to use his real name outside of their quarters, though she had Marcus’ word that the listening devices installed throughout the lab were for his ears and his ears alone.  But sometimes, in certain situations, she couldn’t help herself.

 

And it certainly got _his_ attention. 

 

His head snapped up, his usual annoyance at being disturbed shining in his eyes.  “What?”

 

She had long ago learned not to take his terseness to heart; at least, not this particular brand of terseness.  He had other moments of curt impatience that she found far less palatable, but she never held this work-related brusqueness against him.  “I asked if you were planning to be at this all night.”

 

His expression was eloquent in its pique; it was a look she knew well.  She was particularly fond of the creases that gathered between his eyes.  “I would point out the utter absurdity of that question, but I have been reliably informed that such observations are rude and therefore better kept to myself.”

 

Duval arched a brow at him.  “Oh, you are generous, aren’t you?”

 

“I rather thought so,” he said, the corner of his mouth turning up ever so slightly.  “Now, had you a purpose in interrupting me or was the interruption itself aim enough?”

 

“Eh...little bit of both, to be honest.”  Duval gave a sigh, settling herself more firmly against the table, eyeing the pages of calculations laid out below her.  Formula after formula was scrawled across the pages, half of it completely illegible to her eyes.  “Sometimes I swear you’ve invented your own mathematical language...I can’t figure out what half of these numbers and symbols are supposed to be.”

 

“Then perhaps you should have paid closer attention to your coursework at the Academy.”

 

She shot him a look.  “I didn’t mean that I don’t understand the math, thank you very much.  I meant that your writing is atrocious.”

 

“You have but a passing understanding of the math, at best," he argued, frowning.  “And my writing is perfectly serviceable.”

 

He was right about the math; no point in denying that.  But the rest...

 

“ _Serviceable—_ now that’s an interesting word choice.  In fact, I’d say it’s downright telling coming from a man who regularly waxes poetic about his unparalleled superiority.”  She leaned forward, giving him a smirk.  “Admit it...your handwriting is god-awful and you _know it_.”

 

He turned his head, glaring up at her out of the corner of his eye.  “If your plan is to alleviate your obvious boredom by needling me, I shall thank you to take yourself immediately elsewhere.  I am _working_ , Rebecca.”

  

Duval bit back on her grin, knowing she’d scored a point whether he would admit it or not.  “Fine.  Sorry.  As you were, sir.”

  

Khan eyed her sideways for another moment before turning his eyes back to his PADD.

  

As soon as he looked away, Duval’s grin returned full-force.  She leaned over a little further, watching him as he sketched out what looked to be a duct system, the stylus flying over the screen with sure strokes.

  

“So...what’re you working on?”

  

He didn’t stop what he was doing, but she could see his fingers tighten on the stylus, knuckles showing the barest hint of white.  “I am mapping out a redesign for the Vengeance’s environmental control systems.  The intended configuration was abysmally inefficient.”

  

“You think everything about the design of the ship is abysmally inefficient.”

  

“Because it is.”

  

“There’s a whole fleet of active duty starships built on a virtually identical platform that say otherwise.”

  

Khan grit his teeth, the stylus still sliding along the surface of the PADD, though with far more force than strictly necessary.  “The designs are inefficient...not unsound.  There is a marked difference between the two.”

  

She watched him redirect a plumbing line and shook her head.  “And we ended the last meeting with the engineers on such a high note," she sighed.  “They’ll be right back to hating your guts after this next one.  We’ll be dodging death glares for the next month.”

  

“Nonsense.  To a man, they recognized the utter brilliance of my redesign of the warp drive,” he scoffed, casual arrogance on full display.  “I fail to see how turning that same attentive eye upon the remaining systems would engender anything different.”

  

“Apples and oranges,” she dismissed, then shook her head.  “No…not even oranges.  Comparing revolutionary changes to warp core functionality to relocating air ducts and water lines is like comparing apples to…I don’t know…water buffalos or snow boots or something else that’s completely _not_ comparable to apples.”

  

Khan’s hand paused mid-motion, his head lifting ever so slowly to  reveal a look of complete and utter  incredulity.  “What _are_ you talking about?”

  

She sighed, rolling her eyes.  “When you do something as amazing as literally _doubling_ the capabilities of a technology that is already considered to be cutting edge, anyone who understands what that means is going to be awed and amazed.  But take those same people and start messing around with their perfectly functional designs for the simplest and most basic system on the ship and guess what?  They’re going to get offended and they are going to resent the hell out of you for saddling them with a whole lot of completely unnecessary work.”

  

 “This will hardly be the first time I have presented them with the opportunity to improve themselves…”

  

“Exactly!”  Duval laughed, she couldn’t help it.  “You’ve been undermining them and gainsaying them and nitpicking them since the day you got here.  It’s the reason they look at you like they’d love nothing more than to set you on fire, watch you burn and then dance on your ashes.  They absolutely hate you, Khan!”

  

“Be that as it may, I see no reason why that should matter in the slightest.  Mutual dislike hardly precludes the possibility of a viable working relationship,” he replied with a shrug, work once more abandoned and his eyes on hers.  “My...previous life is both evidence of and testament to that fact.”

  

Now _that_ caught her attention.  He never brought up his past—never even hinted at it; not since the earliest days of their forced partnership.  That he brought it up so casually now was a surprise, but also, she recognized immediately, an opportunity; one that she wasn’t about to squander.  If he was of a mind to share, she was going to jump all _over_ the chance to learn as much about him as he was prepared to share. 

  

The key though was not to scare him off the topic.  Take it slow.  Too much too fast and he was sure to clam up tight. 

  

“How so?” 

  

There.  Interested without sounding too eager.  Perfect

  

“My rise to power,” Khan explained, “was, unfortunately but necessarily, a brutal affair.  When it was done, I found myself in the unfortunate position of having acquired a veritable army of desperate hangers on—alleged _advisors_ who smiled and nodded with alacrity to my face but had no good opinion of me when my back was turned.  I knew their loyalty for the farce that it was and they, in turn, knew that my benevolence toward them was entirely dependent upon their ability to play the game appropriately.  There was, in short, little love lost between us…and yet we managed to run an empire despite our reciprocal dislike.”

  

“I’m sorry, but it sounds to me like your definition of a ‘viable working relationship’,” Duval said, fingers sketching out the air quotes, “is one where everyone shuts up and agrees with you because you’re clearly smarter and better than they could ever hope to be.   Did I get that right?”

  

Khan’s lips twitched.  “Close enough to be getting on with,” he said, dipping his head to her in mock-deference, “and I will never apologize for it.  I _am_ better, Rebecca.  Why waste time pretending otherwise?” 

  

Duval scoffed, shaking her head in disbelief.  “You know, just when I think I’ve seen the summit of your mountainous ego, the clouds part and the sun shines through and I realize there’s still a _long_ way to the top.”

  

“It is a simple truth…ego has nothing to do with it.”

  

There was absolutely no good way to answer that.  At least, no way that didn’t include massive amounts of sarcasm.  So instead of answering, Duval cocked her head to the side, watching him with a considering gaze.  “So back to that whole ally to your face, enemy behind your back thing…I have to admit, I do actually understand what you mean.  Probably better than most, to be honest.  Everything you said reminds me so much of the Section.  See, Agents don’t tend to make friends with other Agents.  We’re cordial…respectful, where deserved.  It’s a rare thing for any of us to really buddy up.  Frankly, most of us can’t stand one another, but damned if we don’t manage to pull together and get jobs done when we have to.  Like you said, not getting along doesn’t mean much when you’re back to back in the line of fire.”   

  

“Precisely,” Khan acknowledged with a nod.  “I do not need the engineers to like me, Rebecca…I need only for them to do their jobs.  If they are worth their salt, the former need have absolutely no impact on the latter.”

  

“I’d actually forgotten that we were talking about the engineers,” Duval admitted.  She reached out, grabbed the nearest stool and pulled it towards her, settling herself on it facing him.  “I’m far more interested in hearing more about your past.”

  

Khan eyed her, attempting to look put upon but betrayed by the twinkle of amusement in his eyes.  “I would be lying if I said I was surprised.  I’ve wondered how long it would be before you broached the subject.  Frankly, you held out far longer than I believed you would.”

  

“Hey…you brought it up,” she said with a negligent shrug, meeting his levity with her own.  “You open the door, you _know_ I’m gonna walk through it.”

  

Rolling his stylus between two fingers, Khan leaned further back in his seat.  “I do have work to do, Rebecca.”

  

“Nothing that can’t wait,” she fired back.  “And besides, you’re working so far ahead of the construction schedule at this point that you can afford to take an afternoon off.”

  

“Never let it be said that you are not determined.”

  

“I’m going to take that as a compliment, whether you meant it as one or not,” she said, wiggling a little to get herself into a more comfortable position.  “There’s nothing wrong with being determined.  Without a little old fashioned determination, I wouldn’t be who I am and I certainly wouldn’t be sitting here with you now.”

  

“Touché,” he dropped the stylus to the table, arms crossing over his chest and his entire demeanor shifting away from the tense lines of his work-mode and into the far more relaxed slouch of his more leisurely moments.  “I may well come to regret this, but no man, however exceptional, can hope to hold back the tide…what is it you wish to know?”

  

Duval’s brows arched so high they nearly disappeared into her hairline.  “I’m sorry…I can’t have heard that right.  Did you really just give me carte blanche?”

  

“To ask your questions?  Certainly.  Whether I choose to answer them or not is a different story all together.”

  

And just that quickly, her expression dropped into a frown that was very nearly a pout.  “All the literature said you were cruel…I’ve never believed it more than I do right now.”

  

“I suspect you will manage your disappointment admirably,” Khan dismissed languidly.  “More importantly though, I find myself curious.  To what literature are you referring?”

  

“What literature do you think?  I told you that you’re in the history books…”

  

“Ah, yes,” he cut in, expression darkening, “that paragraph that no one bothers to read anymore.  I do recall you making mention of it.”

  

Duval considered hiding it, but ultimately let him see her wince.  Let him see her regret.  Most times, his memory was a wonder; occasionally, like now, it was a real pain. “Those were early days,” she defended.  “We _both_ said things that were less than kind.”

  

“We did,” he agreed, “though my primary complaint at this juncture is the suggestion that I merit no more than a paragraph of exposition.”

  

Just like that, the mood shifted back to one of easy amity.  “I might have understated things slightly,” she admitted.  “But in all honesty, only slightly.  The information available on you is surprisingly sparse, considering the fact that you ruled a quarter of the globe.  I’m surprised you haven’t looked up everything that you could by now.”

  

Khan sniffed, lowering his gaze as his fingers plucked petulantly at a sheet of scratch paper that sat on the table between them.  “The thought did occur to me.  However, as I have no desire to annoy myself with piecemeal and, in all likelihood, highly inaccurate accounts of a past that I am already intimately acquainted with, I decided to leave well enough alone.”

  

“Probably wise.  It’s all definitely piecemeal, though I have no idea whether it’s truly inaccurate or not.  I can say this with all certainty though…the picture that’s painted of you is far from a pretty one.”

  

“I should imagine not,” he tore a strip off the paper, twisting it now this way, then that.  “I cannot deny that there are a plethora of perfectly legitimate reasons behind such a portrayal—but nor will I ignore the fact that I did my share of good as well.  But, as history is written by the victors, I imagine little of _that_ found purchase in any surviving accounts.”

  

“You imagine correctly,” Duval confirmed, watching him twirl the sliver of paper—far easier than looking at his face at present.  “The victors in this case _really_ didn’t like you.”

  

“The feeling was, and remains, tremendously mutual, I assure you.”  Khan flicked the paper away roughly and clenched his fist, his voice a dark, bitter rumble.  “Those who deposed me were not entirely the heroic liberators that they no doubt painted themselves to be.”

  

This was going to require some serious tact.  There was a tension to him suddenly; a coldness and a hardness that hadn’t been there only moments before, but was now etched into every line and curve of his body.  He was as ill at ease as she had ever seen him and though she hated to see it, she wasn’t about to let it dissuade her.  She was too interested to stop now; she only hoped she could manage to get through this without drawing his temper down on her own head.

  

“According to what I’ve read, the world spent four years at war while under Augment rule.  People were enslaved and executed without even the pretense of justice.  Did you really think that history was _ever_ going to be kind to something like that?” 

 

 Silence.

  

_So much for easing into it, Duval_ , she berated herself.  _First chance you get to ask him questions and you go straight for the damn jugular.  Good job._

  

She risked a glance up at his face and then snapped her eyes back down.  He was staring at his fist where it rested on the table, face blank and expressionless.  She hated that she had put that look on his face, but it wasn’t in her nature to shy from a difficult subject just because it was a difficult subject.  She was made of sterner stuff than that and no matter how little he liked it at that moment, she knew that he was too.

  

“I don’t usually like to drag up old conversations,” she spoke into the silence, hesitant but firm, “but you started it, so I figure I can forgive myself for it this once.  Do you remember that first day here in the lab?  The day you picked this out for your workspace?”

  

He didn’t answer, but she knew he was listening.  She kept talking, ignoring his silence.  “I promised you that I would always tell you the truth and you promised that you wouldn’t get pissed off at me if you took exception to anything I said…”

  

“I am not angry with you, Rebecca,” he interrupted, still bitter but, true to his word, not particularly angry.  “However, allow me to reiterate—history is written by the victors.  It was demonstrably true in my time, it is unquestionably true in this time and it will undoubtedly _remain_ true in times yet to come.  Every source has a bias; every chronicler an agenda.  It would behoove you not to bestow your tacit trust upon any one of them.”

  

She looked up then, meeting his eyes squarely.  “I don’t,” she assured.  “Why do you think I’m bothering to ask you about it?”

  

“Is that what you were doing?  _Asking?_ It rather felt like a shaming exercise.”

  

“Even if I thought it would be remotely possible to do such a thing, I have absolutely no interest in shaming you, Khan.  I just want to understand you better.  I’ll admit, it’s a bit jarring sometimes.  Trying to reconcile the man I see every day with the violent despot I’ve read about…it’s almost surreal sometimes.”

  

He sighed, his shoulders tensing even further and his expression turning pained.  “I will not deny that the situation was far from ideal.  It was a time of great violence—and for parts of the globe, constant violence.  Some amongst my brethren,” it was his turn to wince this time, “were wholly unsuited to the roles they had been cast in.  Yes, there _was_ enslavement.  Yes, there _was_ war and death and all manner of evils committed under the Augment banner, to my everlasting chagrin.  But we did not all fail quite so spectacularly.  _I,_ in particular,did not fail.  I was as just as I could be; I treated those I ruled with fairness and with as much compassion as I was capable.  I did my best to _protect_ my people—all of my people, including the lowest of the lot.  I may not have been the friendly fool that many would have preferred, but I assure you that I did more for those people in four years of turmoil than the previous regimes had managed to achieve in several lifetimes.  Yes, my people feared me—as people must, naturally fear anyone who wields the power that I did, but I ruled them firmly and well.”

  

“The benevolent dictator,” Duval murmured, immediately inclined to believe him, because _that_ man, the one he’d just described…she understood that man.  She _knew_ that man.  That man was very easily recognizable in the man sitting in front of her and wasn’t at all the bloodthirsty tyrant that so much of what she had read suggested that he was.

 

 Khan looked up, their eyes meeting and the tension in his shoulders easing.  “You have read Machiavelli?”

  

Duval gave him a wry grin.  “Are you kidding?  The Admiral drools over the man like you wouldn’t believe.  So much so that he made _The Prince_ required reading for everyone entering the Section.  And might I just say, knowing that _you’ve_ read it…yeah…it explains _a lot_.”

  

“Yes well, knowing now that Marcus possesses a fondness for the text, I suddenly find myself less inclined to admit to my own.”

 

 “I don’t know,” she said, sly now—determined to bring things back to the simple ease that she had grown used to with him.  “Who knows…you and the Admiral might have more in common than you’d like to believe.”

  

“Bite your tongue, woman,” Khan shot back blithely, seemingly sharing her desire to lighten the mood.  “The day I admit to a kinship of any kind with the Admiral is the day you will know that I have gone utterly out of my mind.  That man reminds me only too well of the very worst of the fools I was forced to make nice with for the sake of my reign—lazy and stupid and entirely convinced of their own importance.  Like him, they too went to extraordinary lengths in their attempts to climb into bed with me.”

  

Duval cocked a brow at him.  “I really hope that’s a euphemism.”

 

 His lips twitched, a smirk once more lurking at the corners of his generous mouth.  “In most cases, yes; though, again like Marcus, there were a few who took the notion rather more literally than the rest.  Fathers offered their most eligible daughters; brothers their sisters.  Some men even attempted to present me with their wives.  I often found myself absolutely spoiled for choice.”

  

Well.  Wasn’t that…interesting…

  

And leading.  Conveniently so, to be honest.

  

Because there _was_ something else she had been _dying_ to ask him about; something that she had resigned herself to never knowing.  Not because it made her uncomfortable to ask—though it did, in fact, make her uncomfortable—but because she could see no good way of ever working the topic into conversation.  And now here he was, offering what amounted to yet another golden opportunity…

  

“So is _that_ where it came from?”  She tried to keep her eyes on his, but couldn’t, and her gaze dropped to the tabletop once more.  “I mean…is that how it all started?”

 

 “How what all started?”

  

He was going to make her say it.  The son of a bitch was actually going to make her say it.

  

“You know...” she paused, swallowed hard, “the whole…harem…thing.”

  

A beat.

 

Two.

 

“What?”

 

The word was sharp.  Disbelieving.

 

Duval looked up to find him looking right back at her with what very much appeared to be stunned bafflement.  Feeling entirely wrong-footed, she rushed forward, tongue tripping over the words hastily.  “I’m sorry…maybe that’s not something that was really _talked_ about back then.  But it’s fine, really.  I’m not judging or anything.  It’s just…I found that part interesting is all, you having a harem.  That’s not really something that happens nowadays, so I just…I was just wondering.”

 

Now he was outright gaping at her, eyes wide and mouth hanging slightly open.  It was a new look for him and distantly, past the raging embarrassment, she thought she ought to be quite proud of herself for having put it there.  It was a rare thing to see him truly thrown.

 

The burn of a blush hot on her cheeks, Duval shifted uncomfortably beneath the weight of his stare.  “Come on now…don’t look at me like that,” she snapped, temper flaring brightly.  “I was just _asking_.”  Still nothing.  She tilted her chin up, eyes going to the ceiling.  “Christ almighty, _say_ something already.”

  

“Forgive my silence,” he said, spurred at last to respond, “but I am simply attempting to wrap my head round this new, and frankly, preposterous development.  Rebecca…are you honestly suggesting that I had a _harem_?”

  

Duval’s head snapped back down, a frown now firmly on her face.  “Didn’t you?”

  

He laughed then; a loud, spontaneous rumble of sound that was equal parts surprise and amusement.  “Certainly _not_ ,” he crowed.  “Where on earth did you ever get the idea that I did?”

  

“It was in the dossier that Marcus had on you,” she explained hotly, feeling the blush spread and rather suspecting that she was glowing beet red by that point.  “It’s not in any of the history books, but there was a bit from what looked like a newspaper that was included in the folder that Marcus gave me that first day and it talked all about how…that you had…”

  

“That I had _what_?”

  

That settled it.  She really needed to learn that some questions just should never, _ever_ get asked, no matter how seemingly perfect an opportunity to do so presented itself.

  

“Oh God, _nevermind_ ,” she moaned, one hand coming up to cover her eyes.  “Seriously, just forget I said anything.”

  

“Absolutely not,” Khan said and she could hear it in his voice—the bastard was thoroughly enjoying this.  “This is, by far, the most entertaining conversation I’ve had in, literally, centuries.  Please do continue, Rebecca…what, according to this article, did I have?”

  

_You wanted to break the tension.  I would say you achieved that in spades._

_  
_

“I don’t remember the exact wording,” she admitted, trying very hard to manage her mortification, “but it said you had a very large harem.  So large that you could…you could…oh for _fuck’s sake,”_ she groaned, burying her face behind both her hands now.

  

“Rebecca…”

  

“So large that you could go a whole year without ever having to give a… _repeat performance_ ,” she finished in a rush.  “And that is _definitely_ a euphemism.”

  

Later, she would remember this as the moment that started it all; the moment that she really and truly found herself in an entire world of trouble.  After that moment, she was, quite frankly, an utter goner.

  

Khan laughed.  Not a chuckle, not a scoff, not a snort.  He _laughed_.  He laughed long and loud and she swore that she could _feel_ it in the center of her chest.  It was deep and resonant and quite simply the most stunningly beautiful sound she had ever heard in her life.  So much so that she didn’t even care that the sound came at her expense. 

  

If he would agree to keep laughing like that, she rather thought she would be willing to make a complete and total fool of herself as often as possible.

  

Not that she was about to let him know any of that.

  

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” she said once she’d managed to find her voice again, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at him half-heartedly.  “I’m so glad you’re enjoying my misery.”

  

“Oh, I am,” he gasped once he’d mastered himself, “I really, _really_ am.  As thoroughly as you would were the situation reversed I should expect.”

  

“I would love for the situation to be reversed,” Duval sniffed.  “Because if it were, _you_ would be the one who wanted to crawl into a hole and die and _I_ would be the one laughing my ass off.”

 

He sobered a bit more, though the widest grin she’d ever seen sat boldly on his lips.  “You really are monstrously uncomfortable with this entire subject, aren’t you?”

  

“Yes, I am,” she said primly, brow arched and expression less than pleased.  “It’s a bit outside my area of expertise.”

  

At that, his smile turned positively wicked.  “Is it indeed?  How _fascinating_.”  To her increasing agitation, he stood, rolling to his feet with unconscious grace.  Eyes locked on hers, he slowly stalked around the perimeter of the table.

  

“No,” she denied, watching him and battling the instinctive urge to escape.  “Not fascinating.  Not me.  Not about… _this_.”

  

He didn’t stop, just kept coming.  Slowly.  One step at a time.  Closer.  “Oh, but I say that you are.  Fascinating,” he repeated. 

  

Another step.  He had rounded the corner of the table, the distance between them shrinking alarmingly with every step he took.  “Intriguing.”

  

He was directly in front of her now, towering over her where she sat, frozen.  She stared up at him wide-eyed, her arms falling to clutch desperately at the edges of the stool.  She wanted to say something…anything, but her mouth had gone dry, her tongue thick as wool in her mouth.

  

Khan leaned toward her, chin lowering and eyes going absolutely molten.  “Appealing.”

  

Digging deep, she swallowed hard and shook her head urgently.  “Not me,” she whispered and the words became a mantra, looping over and over in her head.  “Not me.”

  

He leaned further in, taking a final step forward, his thighs lightly brushing the front of her legs.  “Yes,” he said, drawing out the word, turning the single syllable into a long, rumbling _purr_.  “ _You_.”

  

She couldn’t breath—her chest tight with something like panic, but so much warmer that she couldn’t put a proper name to it.  Her stomach clenched, knotted up tight.  He was so close now.  Too close.  She had to tilt her head back to look up at him as he loomed over her.

  

If it had just been physical…if there had been no emotional engagement whatsoever…she would have climbed him like a tree.  But…it wasn’t just physical.

  

And she just didn’t _do_ this. 

  

She couldn’t do _this._

  

But, _Christ_ …she _wanted_ to. 

  

“Stop it.”  The words were barely a whisper of sound, hissing out past lips that had very nearly forgotten how to work.

  

“Stop what _…_ ” he bent further, face so close now that she could feel the warmth of his breath across her face and it sent a shiver down her spine, “… _Rebecca_?” 

  

Too much.  It was too much.

  

_I can’t_.

  

_I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.  Not me.  Never me.  I can’t.  I can’t…_

  

“I can’t,” she choked out, terrified but still firmly trapped in the maelstrom of his gaze.  “ _Please_ , Khan.  Please stop.”

  

She could see the moment he realized—the moment he read the sheer, honest _fear_ in her eyes—because something shifted in his gaze.  Gone suddenly was the predatory glint that had set her heart racing, and in its place, something else entirely.  Something that looked less dangerous, but felt, at the same time, far more threatening.

  

“You are frightened,” he said, his voice as soft and… _sad_?  “Never be frightened of me, Rebecca.”

  

He lifted his hand, slowly, carefully, toward her face, curled knuckles brushing feather-soft against the curve of her cheek.

  

It was electric.  A jolt like she had never felt before.  And finally— _finally_ —she found the will to move; leaping off the stool and ducking beneath his outstretched hand, she bolted for the far side of the room, breath coming in shuddering gasps.  She leaned heavily against the table above her discarded book, knees knocking against the chair she now realized she never should have gotten up from.

  

“You have work to do,” she blurted out once she had gathered enough of her presence of mind to speak, though she didn’t dare turn to look at him.  “I interrupted…and you have work to do…so I’m just going to…I’m going to go.”

  

She was babbling.  She could hear herself babbling, but damned if she knew how to stop.  Not at that moment.

  

“Rebecca…”

  

“No,” the word came out louder and far sharper than intended, but she couldn’t.  She couldn’t hear him.  Couldn’t listen.  Not now.  “No…just…no.  I’m going to go.  I have to _go_.”

  

And she did.  She went—tearing out of the lab before he could stop her.  Escaping.  Running away from the most terrifying truth she had ever known.

  

Because she had realized something.  The second he had touched her, she had _known_.

  

She _was_ frightened.  He’d been absolutely right about that.  But he had been wrong about the rest.

  

It wasn’t _him_ that she was running away from.  It wasn’t _him_ that she feared.

  

It was herself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing.
> 
> A/N: As always, thank you for the reviews/follows/favorites! Shout out to my beta—love you, Xaraphis!  
> 

_(1 Week Later)_

 

She didn’t know if she could do this.

  
As she sat on the edge of her bed, elbows on her knees, dressed but for her boots and watching Khan’s shadow break the thin sliver of light that shined beneath her door—she could hear him out there, moving back and forth, pacing the length of the room; he’d taken to doing that often, of late—it was that thought that cycled on repeat through her head.

  
She honestly didn’t know if she could do this.

  
The past week had been…awkward; at times almost painfully so.  It hovered over every interaction, insinuated itself into every conversation and lingered in the now lengthy silences.  There was distance between them now that hadn’t been there before that day in the lab.  Deliberate distance.

  
And she was the one who had put it there.

  
Khan had tried, in the days and hours between then and now, to wade through it; had, with far more delicacy than she’d thought him capable of, ever so tentatively attempted to bridge the gap that now stood, gaping, between them.  He was never overt about it, never obvious.  There were no sweeping gestures, no grandiose overtures; rather, his approaches had been couched in subtlety—a look here, a word there.  All of which she had seen and heard and all of which she had summarily ignored.  
 

When she had left him behind in the lab that day, she had been in a panic.  A raging, roiling panic that had wound itself around her so tightly that she could barely breathe past its clinging, clasping grasp.  She had gone straight to her room and spent the rest of the day and most of the night lying flat on her bed, staring holes through the ceiling and battling the turmoil of her thoughts. 

  
Sleep had been impossible, which was just as well—with sleep, came dreams and she had no desire to learn what scenarios her unconscious mind might conjure.  She had already been haunted by the specter of burning blue eyes and an infinitely gentle caress; she certainly didn’t need her imagination painting pictures of what might have been had she stayed.  What she’d needed then was time.  Time to think, time to consider…time to decide what the hell she was going to do.

  
By the time the lights had signaled the dawning new day, she had done all of those things in turn.  She had thought long and hard about what had happened. She had considered countless different options as to how to proceed.  And she had decided on what really felt to be the only viable solution available to her, given the whole of the situation.

  
In the end, it was a job.  An assignment, just like any of the other hundreds of assignments she had completed over the course of her career.  Somewhere along the way, she had lost sight of that; had let herself get involved on a level that she never, ever should have.  She had made a rookie mistake and allowed her personal feelings to cloud her professional judgment.  So much so that she had actually begun to question not only herself but also her allegiances—and that, she had decided in the deepest part of the night, was simply unacceptable.

  
The only solution was to turn it off.  All of it.  Khan had a job to do; her job was to make sure he did it.  Nothing about that equation required that they be anything more than colleagues.  Her mistake was in thinking that trust—admittedly essential to their ultimate success—necessitated friendship.  She had opened herself too much; allowed herself to care.  Now, she needed to lock it all away; to gather up all those nagging _feelings_ and put them away. 

  
Luckily for her, she had plenty of experience with doing exactly that.  Her life before joining Starfleet had taught her that particular lesson well and often.  Pain could be contained, hurt ignored.  As for the rest—the emotions that she categorically refused to put a name to—those could be boxed up, sealed tight and shoved down deep.  So deep that she could pretend that they had never existed in the first place. She’d done it before.  She knew she could do it again.

  
And so she had. 

  
It hadn’t gone perfectly; the first few days especially had been a struggle and she had found herself, to her supreme annoyance, fighting back tears on several different occasions.  Most notably on those occasions when Khan was trying his best to draw her out, asking her questions or attempting to engage her in casual conversation.  It had become so ingrained, so _normal_ , that she had very nearly forgotten herself and responded as she would have done before.  But every time, just before her emotions could get the better of her, her reason would reassert itself and her resolve would harden and she would pull back.

  
Unsurprisingly, Khan had noticed.  Every time.

  
She had known that he would and she certainly wasn’t trying to hide it.  She respected his intelligence too much to expect anything else.  She wasn’t even all that surprised that he had tried to draw her back.  After all, as she had come to realize during that long, restless night—she was all he had.  He was, despite appearances, a social creature.  He hid it well, but she knew it for the truth that it was—Khan was alone and he _hated_ it.

  
It had been something of an epiphany and she had wondered how she hadn’t recognized it before.  It explained so much, so well.  It was all down to his loneliness in the end.  He had befriended her with such relative ease not because she was uniquely suited to the position, but because she was the only one around to _be_ befriended.  He had opened up to her not because he wanted _her_ to know the truth of him, but because he needed _someone_ to.

  
As for…the rest.  Well, the same held true there as well.  It was proximity, nothing more.  It wasn’t because she was _her_ , it was because she was _there_.

  
Once she had recognized that, once she had thought about it and really _understood_ , the decision of how to proceed had become so much easier to make.  She didn’t fault him for any of it.  As it made it a hell of a lot easier for her to pack away her own feelings, she actually thought she should thank him for it.

  
She was the one who had no excuse for behaving as she had.

  
A trill of sound broke through her reverie, drawing her attention to the communicator sitting on the table beside her bed.  Reaching for it, she flipped it open.

  
“Duval.”

  
“So sorry to bother you this early, Agent Duval,” Agent Allen’s voice was overly friendly and not at all repentant despite her words.  “Admiral Marcus wants to speak to you ASAP.”

  
Wonderful.  Just what she didn’t need.

  
“I’ll be there in ten,” she said, not even attempting to return the younger woman’s false cheer.

  
“I’ll put him through to Comm Room three,” Allen chirped.  “Things have been going so _well_ for you lately, Agent Duval.  I really hope there’s nothing _wrong_.”

  
She really, _really_ wasn’t in the mood for this.

  
“And I hope you know exactly what your concern means to me, _Agent_ Allen,” she drawled, then snapped the communicator shut with far more force than necessary, only just reigning in the urge to throw the damn thing against the wall.  Tossing it instead onto the bed beside her, she sucked in a deep breath, scrubbed her hands over her face, and then breathed out long and slow.  After another moment spent gathering herself, she bent over and yanked on her boots before pushing herself up off the bed and crossing over to her small dresser.  Picking up her brush, she ran it swiftly through her hair, then twisted the dark chestnut tresses up into her habitual bun and secured it with a plain black tie.  After giving her reflection a final once over—studiously ignoring the dark circles beneath her eyes—she turned away, scooped her communicator from the bed, secured it to her belt and headed out the door.

  
Once out in the living room, she paused and turned toward where she knew Khan was standing at the far end of the room.  Always careful to be nothing but polite, she dipped her head in acknowledgment.  “Morning,” she said, distant but cordial.

  
Khan’s eyes flared momentarily before his expression fell blank.  He straightened, shoulders going back and chin coming up. “Good Morning, Rebecca.”

  
“I’ve gotta head to the administrative side.  Marcus wants…”

  
“To speak to you, yes,” he cut in, finishing for her in a voice with more than a little snap to it.  “I know.  I heard.”

  
“Right.  Super ears,” Duval quipped, offering him a thin-lipped smile.  “Handy.”

  
“Indeed.”

  
She looked away, tension building behind her eyes.  Five seconds of conversation with him and already she could feel a headache coming on.  “I’ll meet you in the lab after.  Let you know what Marcus has to say.”

  
He said nothing. 

  
_For the best_ , she reminded herself.  The less he said, the better--the _easier_.  Duval turned her back on him and headed for the main door.

  
“ _Rebecca…_ ”

  
It was half-command, half-entreaty and it felt like a knife in her chest.  But she didn’t stop.  Couldn’t stop.  And she certainly wasn’t going to look back.  Not when he said her name like _that_.

  
“Sorry, but Marcus said ASAP.  Don’t want to annoy him.”  The door hissed open in front of her.  “Shouldn’t be too long.”

  
Then she was in the corridor and the door closed behind her and the burn behind her eyes intensified.  She blinked it away furiously as she walked, ignoring everyone she passed and focusing all her energy on centering herself once more. 

  
By the time she stood outside the door of the designated Comm Room, she had mastered herself--shoved it all down and locked it all away.  Simple as that.

  
Easy as anything.

  
Now coolly composed, she typed in her clearance code and stepped inside, settling herself in the chair before the viewscreen.  Leaning forward, she tagged herself into the system.  Almost immediately, the Admiral’s smiling face appeared before her.

  
Not for the first time of late, she felt an almost irrational urge to wipe that smug grin off the old man’s face.  She might have decided to re-focus her priorities, but that didn’t mean she was ever going to be able to look at Marcus the same way she had before.  That bridge was well and truly burnt--nothing left of it but dust and ashes now, which was for the best really.  Yes, he was her Commanding Officer…but he was not now, nor had he _ever_ been her friend and more fool her for ever having believed otherwise.

  
“Admiral,” she greeted, dipping her chin deferentially. 

  
“Lieutenant,” he returned, though without the nod.  “It’s early, I know, but I’ve just approved a small change in plan for you and your boy and I wanted to let you know as soon as possible so that you’d have time to prepare.”

  
There were so many things that she disliked about that statement that she didn’t know where to begin.  So she didn’t.  Marcus didn’t care anyway, so why bother?  “Prepare, sir?”

  
For a moment, the smile slipped and Marcus looked—oddly enough—a little bit chagrined; and honestly so, at that.  “Mark this day on your calendar, Duval, because I can tell you now it’ll never happen again but…I’m actually sorry about this.”

  
Duval frowned, not at all liking the way that sounded.  As the preface to his statement had suggested, Alexander Marcus apologized to no one.  Ever.  That he was doing it now couldn’t be good.  “Sir?”

  
Marcus sighed and shook his head.  “You’re aware that several of the upgraded weapons Khan has developed have already been put to field use?”

  
“Aye, sir,” she nodded, more confused than ever.  “Is there a problem with them?  Has something gone wrong…”

  
“Not at all, Duval, not at all,” Marcus cut in, waving away her concerns.  “They’re proving to be everything I wanted them to be and more.  No…the problem is, they’ve drawn some, shall we say, unwanted attention?”

  
_Christ Almighty_ , Duval roared to herself, _just get to the fucking point!  Don’t give me this spoon-fed bullshit._

  
 “From who, sir?”

 

“You know my daughter, Carol, don’t you, Duval?”

  
_Oh good goddamn..._

  
“I do, sir.”

  
“Well, over the past several months, I’ve been allowing her to liase on several Section projects,” Marcus said with another sigh.  “Well, you know her, so you know how she is, Duval--she took one look at those guns and immediately started nagging me about them.  Where did they come from?  Who developed them?  Did I realize how incredible they are?  My little weapons specialist.”

  
That last had been said with fond indulgence and Duval got the distinct impression that Marcus, rather than truly respecting his daughter’s intelligence, was simply humoring her.  Having met Carol Marcus several times in the past—met her, spoken to her and, to the extent that she’d let herself, liked her—Duval was quietly certain that the girl was far smarter than her father gave her credit for being.  She was also one of the few honestly nice people that Duval had met since joining the Section.  That she was _Marcus’_ daughter had always been a source of utter disbelief to her…

  
“Not to push, sir, but you mentioned a change in plans that I needed to prepare for?”

  
“So I did,” he paused to give her a fond grin.  “Always straight to the point, aren’t you, Duval?”

  
“You know me, sir.” 

  
“Yes I do, Lieutenant, which is one of the biggest reasons why I’m giving Carol what she wants.  I’m sending her out to Io for the time being.  She wants to have a look at what you all are doing out there and I saw no reason to deny the request.  Especially since it saves me a trip—I’d been planning to pop out there myself soon.”

  
_Oh.  Fabulous._

  
On top of everything else she had to deal with, this was just the icing on the cake.  Khan was going to just _love_ this development.  On the bright side, at least it saved them from having to deal with another of Marcus’ visits...silver linings, and all that.

  
“When should I expect her, sir?”

  
“She’ll be there this afternoon—approximately 1400.  I’ve already informed Commander Vazquez of her impending arrival and he’s agreed to see to all the arrangements for her stay.”

  
And it just kept getting better.  It was nearing 1030 now, giving her just over three and a half hours until Lieutenant Marcus arrived.  The Admiral’s concept of forewarning really could do with a bit of work.

  
“I’ll check in with Vazquez, sir—make sure everything is taken care of.  I’ll also be there to meet her when she arrives and personally escort her to the lab when she’s ready,” she said with a nod, hiding her annoyance.  From top field agent to personal assistant in less than six months…oh how the mighty had fallen.  “I do feel it necessary to warn you though, sir—I can’t guarantee that Khan will be particularly pleasant about the intrusion into his lab.”

  
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wanted to reach out and snatch them back.  Talk about a poor choice of phrasing.

  
Marcus visibly bristled, his temper piqued just like she’d known it would be.  “Intrusion?  _His_ lab?”

  
“Sorry, sir,” Duval backtracked swiftly, attempting to placate as best she could, “I said that wrong.  What I meant was…”

  
“I know exactly what you meant, Lieutenant.  The man thinks he owns every damn room he steps foot in.  But that’s _my_ lab in _my_ station and it’s _your_ job to make sure that he doesn’t step even one toe out of line around _my_ daughter.”

  
“Aye, sir.”

  
“I mean it, Duval,” Marcus leaned forward until his face filled the screen.  “You tell that son of a bitch to be on his best behavior...or else.”

  
“Khan is far from stupid, sir—I’m confident that the warning will be unnecessary.  But just to be safe, I’ll make sure the message is crystal clear.  You have my word on that.”

  
“Good.”  Marcus leaned back again, the fierceness of his expression easing and that deceptively amiable grin pulling at the corners of his mouth.  “I have every faith in you on this, Duval.  I look forward to hearing Carol’s take on your progress.  I’m sure I’ll continue to be highly impressed with your results.”

  
“I know you will be, Admiral.”

  
The grin widened.  “You know, it really is good to have you back on board, Duval.”

  
“It’s good to be back on board, sir.”  And it would be.  Very soon, she would be able to say those words and actually _mean_ them.

  
She would.

  
Now, Marcus gave her a nod and—of all things—a wink.  “I’ll let you get to it.  Take care of my little girl, Duval.”

  
“Will do, Admiral.”

  
The screen went black and Duval reached out to cut the transmission from her end as well.  As soon as that was done, she threw herself backwards in the chair with a pointed curse.  Staring up at the ceiling, she shook her head, sucked in a deep breath and then blew it out again, hard.

  
After another moment, she pushed up out of the chair and moved to the door.  Part of her would have loved nothing more than to just sit there in the solitary quiet, but a much larger part of her wanted to be up and moving—doing _something_.  Feet moving on autopilot, she started down the corridor, not paying any attention to where she was going.  She could feel the tension pulling tight across her shoulders, stress buzzing through her and begging to be released.  She knew that her first priority should be to tell Khan about the new developments, but she knew that probably wasn’t the best idea in her current state of mind.

  
He wasn’t going to be happy.  Before she even attempted the conversation, she needed to get herself centered; find the carefully controlled calm that she had determined to be her best weapon against her own foolishness.  To do that, she needed to blow off some steam.

  
The best way she knew to do that was a trip to the gym for an hour or so of hard, punishing training.  After that—after she had regained her composure—she would head straight for the lab.  She nodded to herself as the door to her— _their_ —quarters loomed large before her, her feet having known their destination long before she did.  Just a quick stop to grab her bag and then…

  
Her thoughts shuddered to a halt the second she walked through the door. 

  
He wasn’t supposed to be here.  He was supposed to be in the lab.  She’d _told_ him that she would meet him in the lab. 

  
“Why aren’t you in the lab?”

  
Khan, sitting almost painfully upright in one of the two armchairs in the lounge, turned his head to look at her.  “You have been avoiding me.”

  
There was no point in attempting to deny the accusation—and it was an accusation, no question about that—so like she had been doing for the past week, she simply ignored it entirely.  “Actually, it’s probably good that you are here…saves me a trip.  Marcus had some news and it affects you…”

  
“And when you have not been avoiding me,” Khan spoke over her as he rose to his feet, “you have been distant.”

  
He was facing her now, all unsmiling disapproval and grim determination and Duval could feel her hackles rising in turn.  She crossed her arms over her chest, defensive and trying very hard not to be.  “I don’t know if you know this, but Marcus has a daughter.  One of Starfleet’s best and brightest—legitimately so, too.  I mean, I’m sure the inevitable nepotism hasn’t exactly _hurt_ her career, but it certainly hasn’t _made_ it either...”

  
“I have allowed the withdrawal,” Khan continued, ignoring her entirely, his tone cold and hard and jagged, “not only because it was abundantly clear that you had need of it, but also because I assumed it would prove little more than a temporary impediment.  After careful observation, I have come to realize that you appear to have something far more permanent in mind and that I will not permit.”

  
_Permit_.  _Allow._   The words, like darts, pierced and stuck deep.  Duval could feel the anger trying to claw its way up from inside her, desperate to be given its head.  It would have felt so _good_ to get angry, to scream and curse and carry on like she hadn’t let herself do in a very, very long time.  But she couldn’t do that; couldn’t let herself do that.  Anger was a gateway that, if opened, would lead all too quickly to everything that she had been trying so hard to forget. “Long story short,” she snapped, arms still tightly banded across her chest, “Carol Marcus is a weapons expert.  She’s coming here to review your work and she’ll be here in a couple of hours, so how about you head on to the lab?  I’ll be along shortly with Dr. Marcus.”

  
For a long moment, Khan just stared at her, eyes so cold that they _burned_.  “I will not be ignored.  I will not be dismissed.  I do not care about Marcus or his daughter and you _will_ listen to me, Rebecca.”

  
Duval looked away, unwilling-- _unable_ \--to hold his gaze any longer and hating herself for showing even this much of her feelings to him.  “I don’t...I can’t...” she stopped, swallowed hard.  Her control was slipping.  She could feel it, tenuous and fleeting and she knew she needed to get away from him.  Fast.  “Can we just...get through today?  I know we need to talk.  I do-- _I know_.  But not now.”

  
Silence. 

  
She risked a glance his way, watched a concerned frown peek out from behind the blank fury, and then looked immediately away again.  She didn’t want concern from him.  Not now.  His anger she could handle--it worked very much to her advantage, made it easier for her to stay away.  But his concern...

  
It drew her in.  Made her legs itch to close the distance between them.  Made her lips twitch with the desire to give him the explanation he wanted, to share the truth that he was demanding.  Made her want so many things that she knew she shouldn’t.

  
Made her _want_.

  
And the last thing she could afford to do in this situation, was _want_.

  
“Rebecca...”

  
He used her name like he owned it now; it rolled off his tongue with sinuous resonance, the simple syllables caressed by the darkness of his spine-tingling baritone.  She never should have offered it to him--wouldn’t have, had she known just how fearsome a weapon it would become in his hands.

  
“Not now, Khan,” she repeated, locking eyes with him though it was the last thing she wanted to do.  “ _Please_.”

  
And suddenly _he_ was the one looking away, his arms falling stiffly to his sides where his fists clenched and unclenched rhythmically.  “Not now,” he agreed, and his voice was drawn as tight and taut as the rest of him.  “But soon.  It _will_ be soon, Rebecca.”

  
“Soon,” she agreed.  “But first...”

  
“Dr. Marcus,” Khan finished for her, nodding sharply.  “Yes...I _was_ listening.  I do not suppose I have a choice in the matter.”

  
Duval snorted, an inelegant but apropos response.  “Since when has choice entered into this particular equation of ours?  Marcus makes the calls, we get to live with them.  Luckily, this time, he might just have done us a favor.”

  
“I fail to see how this could in any possible way constitute a _favor_.”

  
“You’d rather it be Marcus himself poking around the lab and nosing through your work?”  Duval shook her head.  “Trust me...if you let it, this could turn into a very good thing.”

  
Khan did not look convinced.  “She is Marcus’s daughter, Rebecca.”

  
“And she’s about as different from her daddy as it’s possible to get,” Duval assured him, sounding and feeling far more comfortable than she had before--the stomach-churning tension of earlier settled now.  Khan too looked far more at ease, though she could still see the strain hiding beneath.  Not that she could blame him for being unable to erase it entirely; she rather suspected that she appeared similarly transparent to him at that moment.  “Trust me on this--Carol Marcus is _not_ her father’s daughter.”

  
Head tilting, Khan examined her closely, considering.  “If you are certain...”

  
“I am,” she affirmed.  “Completely certain.”

  
Khan gave a short, sharp nod.  “Then I will endeavor to afford her the chance to earn my good opinion as she has done yours.”

  
If the situation had been what it was before--if that scene in the lab had never happened--she would have expressed her satisfaction far more effusively.  But things weren’t what they were and instead of whooping with delight at his relatively easy acceptance, she merely cracked a small smile--a thin wisp of a thing, just a curl a the corner of her lips--and nodded crisply.  “Good...that’s good.  I appreciate you giving it a chance.”

  
Fighting back a frown, Khan turned his eyes to the door, looking past her rather than at her.  “Yes...well...I _do_ have work that needs doing.  I suppose I shall...” his voice trailed off and he gestured toward the door, the mood between them stilted and uncomfortable.

  
“I’ll meet you in the lab later,” she said into the awkward silence, “once Dr. Marcus arrives.”

  
“Right.  Yes.” 

  
They stood there, neither moving and both painfully aware of everything left unsaid.  Finally, knowing that one of them had to make the first move, Duval edged past him and started for the door of her room.

  
“Rebecca...”

  
His voice stopped her just as she reached her door.  She glanced back over her shoulder, hearing the hiss of the door sliding open in front of her.  Khan was still in the same spot, his eyes still focused straight ahead--determinedly away from her.

  
“I will hold you to your word,” he said, voice quiet but determined.  “This cannot continue."  a pause.  “I do not like this... _rift_ between us.”

  
That last was said softly; that magnificent voice gone oddly gentle.  She had heard him sound like that only once before.  _Never be frightened of me, Rebecca_ , he had said then.  And as before, she felt her heart twist painfully in her chest at the sadness he wasn’t even trying to hide.  She looked away again, staring forward into her bedroom and blinking furiously against the burn of tears as everything she had been fighting to contain came bursting out, rushing out and over her. 

  
She didn’t know what to say; wasn’t sure she could get the words out even if she did.  So she said nothing, just stepped forward into her room.  When the door hissed shut behind her, she slumped backwards against it. 

  
She wasn’t equipped for this.  Wasn’t even remotely prepared to deal with it.

  
And she had no idea what to do to change that.

  
* * *

  
 At exactly 1400, Duval stood in the shuttle bay, hands clasped behind her back and a welcoming smile plastered on her face as she waited for Dr. Carol Marcus to disembark.

  
She had never made it to the gym.  All the nervous energy that had plagued her had been consumed by the emotional tidal wave that had swamped her and she hadn’t been able to stomach the idea of facing anyone or anything beyond the four sheltering walls of her room.  So she hadn’t even tried.  Instead, she staid put; tucked herself away in the one small corner of her life that felt truly safe.  She sat on the floor, back to her bed and knees pulled tight to her chest, and tried desperately to repair her internal defenses--to shore up the walls that had been left sagging beneath the weight of Khan’s soft words and obvious distress.

  
She had managed well enough, though not as completely as she would have liked.  By the time she had emerged, she had regained enough control that she felt capable of getting through the rest of the day.  So long as the man in question kept to his word and left well enough alone, she was confident that she would be able to hold everything together.

  
If he didn’t...

  
Well.  It wasn’t worth thinking about.  Especially not when Carol Marcus was stepping down from the small ship in front of her, a wide smile on her pretty face and her hand already extended toward Duval in greeting.

  
Automatically reaching out to accept the handshake, she inclined her head deferentially.  “Dr. Marcus--welcome to Io.”

  
Carol, her smile only getting wider, gave her hand a firm shake.  “Thank you, Lieutenant Duval.  And thank you so much for having me.  Though I’m sure my father left little enough room for refusal, I do honestly appreciate the opportunity to look at the work you’ve been doing out here.”

  
Bubbly, bright and beautiful--Carol Marcus was like a breath of fresh air.  Like every other time Duval had been around her, she found herself smiling in spite of herself.  She couldn’t help it--the other woman was a sunny day; all eagerness and optimism.  In short, she was so very many things that Duval never had been but secretly wished she could be.

  
“As you’ll see soon enough, Dr. Marcus, I can’t take credit for any of the work that’s being done.  That honor lies solely with Commander Harrison, but I’m happy to accept your thanks on his behalf.”

  
If possible, Carol’s smile brightened.  “I take it the Commander doesn’t do well with thanks, then?”

  
Duval’s smile turned wry.  “I’ll leave you to make your own conclusions about the Commander,” she said dryly.  “Though I will warn you that he can be a bit of a handful at times.”

  
“Yes, so I’ve been told.”  Carol shifted the bag on her shoulder, leaning toward Duval with a conspiratorial gleam in her eyes.  “My father was full of warnings regarding Commander Harrison.  I know he meant to put me off, but I must admit that it just made me even more intrigued.  Has he really designed all those amazing new weapons himself?”

  
“He has."  Duval turned, motioned for Carol to precede her out of the shuttle bay.  “If you’re up for it, I’ll take you to meet him now.  He’s waiting for us in the lab.”

  
Steps bouncing with anticipation, Carol started forward.  “Oh, excellent!  I have so many questions for him,” she paused, looked back to Duval with a worried frown.  “I won’t be interrupting his work will I?  I would hate to impose if he’s busy...”

  
“Dr. Marcus,” Duval shook her head, wry grin still in place, “if we waited until Commander Harrison didn’t consider it an imposition, we’d never go to the lab at all.”

  
And just like that, the worry melted away, that bright smile lighting up her face once more.  “He certainly sounds formidable.”

  
Duval arched a brow.  “Oh, you really have no idea.”

  
They started forward again, leaving the shuttle bay behind and heading into the station proper.

  
“I hope you don’t mind the lack of formal reception,” Duval remarked after a few minutes of surprisingly comfortable silence as they walked.  “Facility Commander Vazquez wanted to put together a full welcoming party, but I thought you might prefer just to get right to it.  At least, that seemed more in keeping with what I’ve seen of you in the past.”

  
“And you’re exactly right,” Carol said with a nod and an appreciative grin.  “I would have hated to be met with all that pomp and circumstance.  Commander Vazquez was very kind to suggest it, but I much prefer your way of doing things, Lieutenant.”

  
“You might mention that to Commander Vazquez when you see him--he was convinced you’d throw a fit and complain to your father.  I think he’s waiting on the call informing him of his demotion as we speak.”

  
Carol laughed.  “I am glad to see you again, Lieutenant.  It’s quite refreshing to find someone in this organization who doesn’t turn into a complete sycophant at the mere mention of the name Marcus.”

  
Duval’s lips quirked in a half-grin, pleased to see that Carol Marcus was everything she’d remembered her to be.  “I never have been the bend and scrape type,” she admitted.  “Doesn’t always serve me well, but I’m too old to go changing now.”

  
“On the contrary, I think it serves you brilliantly,” Carol disagreed.  “There’s a reason my father trusts you so implicitly, Lieutenant.  I know he may not always show it, but he thinks very highly of you.  More than that, he respects you.  How many of those bend and scrape types can say that?”

  
If there was one fault to be found in Dr. Carol Marcus, Duval was fairly certain she had just stumbled across it.  She was, it appeared, quite painfully naive.  At least as far as her father was concerned.  But then...could she really be faulted for that?  Who didn’t want to think the best of their own father? 

  
“I think,” Duval said carefully, treading lightly, “I’ll just have to take your word on that one, Dr. Marcus.”

  
“Please, call me Carol,” the younger woman said pleasantly.  “With as much as I hope we will be seeing of one another over the next few weeks, I would rather not stand on such stuffy formality.”

  
The polite thing to do was to offer her own given name in return, but Duval couldn’t bring herself to do it.  She’d made that mistake once already and it was one time too many as far as she was concerned.  However, Rebecca wasn’t the only name she had to give.

  
“Well then, Carol, I guess you should call me Duval,” she offered instead.  “I think you know the rank doesn’t count for a whole lot here in the Section anyway.”

  
Carol shook her head, shifting her bag on her shoulder once again.  “I sometimes forget that Section 31 operates as a separate entity from Starfleet.  I understand the necessity of it, but I often wonder if my father fully appreciates the difficulties he would find himself in if the existence of it was brought to the attention of the rest of Command.”

  
And there was that naiveté again.  Duval glanced sideways at the woman walking next to her.  Starfleet Command--or at least, anyone in Command who’s opinion actually meant anything--was fully aware of the existence of the Section.  They might pretend otherwise, but Duval knew the truth.  She’d personally seen several of the highest ranking officers, resplendent in their Starfleet best, coming and going from Marcus’ office far below the Kelvin Archive.  None of them knew everything but all of them knew _something_ \--an organization as extensive and far-reaching as the Section could never exist in complete secrecy.  The key was plausible deniability, something that Marcus had cultivated in spades.

  
“I wouldn’t worry too much about your daddy, Carol,” Duval said carefully.  “If anyone knows how to handle his business, it’s Alexander Marcus--his contingency plans have contingencies.”

  
“Mmmm,” Carol hummed, the sound somewhere between agreement and uncertainty.  “I’m sure you’re right, Duval.”

  
She didn’t sound sure, but Duval wasn’t about to call her on it.  They kept walking, coming ever closer to their destination.  After a few long minutes of silence, Duval could see Carol stealing sidelong glances at her.  She didn’t comment on it, just left things alone.  If the girl had something to say, she’d say it in her own time.

  
Her own time, it turned out, was about ten seconds later.

  
“Duval...might I ask you something?”

  
A voice in her head that sounded frustratingly like Khan’s snipped out that she just had, but she squashed the thought immediately.  Resisting the urge to snark, she gave a negligent shrug.  “Fire away.”

  
“Section 31...," Carol stopped, hesitated for a moment, her eyes trained forward down the corridor.  “It’s a...a _good_ thing, isn’t it?”

  
Now that really was a hell of a question.  Especially for Duval.  Especially now.

  
So many things ran through her mind then--flashes of assignments past, snippets of old conversations, memories of all sorts and shapes, a flare of pain in electric blue eyes, _how will you go about using the people I love as leverage against me?_ She frowned, shook her head to banish the memory.  “Sometimes,” she finally answered, her voice strained.  “Sometimes, yes.  Sometimes, no.”

She turned her head, meeting Carol’s gaze, sorry to see the vaguely uncomfortable grimace there.  “But that’s not really the point of it, Carol,” she continued, eyes sliding away from the other woman once more.  “The question isn’t, _is it a good thing?_ ; the question is, _is it a necessary thing?_ ”

  
Silence again.  Heavier this time; a thoughtful quiet.  They rounded the final turn and soon enough were approaching the door to the lab.  Duval was about to step up to it but was stopped by a staying hand at her elbow.  Pausing mid-step, she turned to look at Dr. Carol Marcus, who was so much _more_ , so much _better_ than her father gave her credit for.

  
There was a determined look in her big, blue eyes that was echoed in the tilt of her chin and the line of her shoulders.  The girl might be naive about a lot of things, but Duval couldn’t hold it against her--not when she was prepared to ask the hard questions.  And especially not when she actually wanted real answers to them.

  
“Is it a necessary thing?”

  
“Yes,” Duval answered without even the slightest delay, without even the smallest qualm.  “It’s flawed and imperfect and shit happens sometimes that absolutely shouldn’t, but when everything’s said and done, the galaxy--the _Earth_ \--is better for it.  Safer.  More secure.  If you believe nothing else that I tell you, believe this...Section 31 is a necessary evil, Carol.  An absolutely, unquestionably necessary evil.”

  
After a long moment, the younger woman nodded, giving Duval a slightly wobbly smile.  “I sincerely appreciate your honesty, Duval.”

  
“Yeah, well,” Duval shifted, Carol’s hand dropping away from her arm, “I’ve found myself doing that a lot lately--the whole being honest thing.  I’ve had kinda mixed results with it, but I’m glad it worked out for the best this time.”

  
“Yes, and I thank you for it.”

  
Duval shook her head, grin tugging at her lips once more.  “I’m gonna accept those thanks while they’re still on the table.  I’m about to introduce you to Commander Harrison...”

  
And without further ado, Duval stepped forward, activated the door and then stepped through, turning to offer Dr. Marcus a welcoming beckon.  “...let’s see if you have any thanks left for me after that.”

  
Carol Marcus squared her shoulders, sucked in and then blew out a deep breath and then walked into the lab, her head held high and the light of discovery lighting up her face like a beacon.

  
Without waiting for Duval, Carol marched determinedly across the lab and straight up to where Khan was sitting, scribbling away on a pad of paper.  He didn’t lift his head, didn’t acknowledge them at all, but Carol was not the least bit perturbed.  She didn’t stop until she was nearly on top of the table and thrust her hand out, damn near poking Khan in the chest with her overeager greeting.

  
“Commander Harrison,” she began, and her voice was strong and capable and so damned earnest--as different to her father as night and day, “a great pleasure to meet you, sir.  I’m Carol Marcus.”

  
Khan who had finally looked up, tilted his gaze past Carol and her outstretched hand and onto Duval where she stood still by the door.  She shifted her own gaze slightly, focusing entirely on Carol and her still fully extended hand.  She counted four heartbeats before he looked away from her once again, before she felt the loss of his attention as he turned it onto the woman in front of him.

  
He still didn’t shake the proferred hand, though he eyed it with thinly veiled contempt before turning that same less than welcoming look on Carol’s face.  “What an unfortunate surname you have, Dr. _Marcus_.”

  
Carol, bless her heart, didn’t miss a beat.  Didn’t even flinch.  Certainly didn’t let his rudeness phase her in the slightest.  Instead, she smiled and pushed her hand even further toward him.  “Lucky then that I have an alternative to fall back on--my parents are divorced, you see, and I grew up the proud owner of two very different last names.  Marcus is obviously out.  Tell me...have you any objections to Wallace?”

  
She had surprised him--Duval could read it in the ever so slight twitch of his left brow.  _Good girl_ , she thought hard at Carol’s back.  _Keep it up._  

  
“Or,” Carol continued when Khan stayed stubbornly silent, “I suppose you might call me Carol...but I’m afraid I would have to insist on calling you John if...”

  
“ _Dr. Wallace_ ,” Khan cut her off, “you will call me Commander and nothing else or I will end this association before it has even begun.”

  
And again, Carol didn’t give an inch.  “Fine then, _Commander_.  As I was saying, it is a pleasure to meet you.”

  
“I’m sure it is,” Khan snipped, dropping his eyes back to his work.  “Do put your hand away, Dr. Wallace.”

  
Carol cocked her head back toward Duval and arched a questioning brow at her as she leaned against the wall beside the door with her arms crossed.  She answered with an eye roll and a shake of her head, earning her a quick grin as the Doctor lowered her hand back to her side.

  
“If you have quite finished with your moment of female solidarity,” he slid one of his many PADD’s across the table toward Carol, “perhaps we might begin.  I have not the luxury of time to waste.”

  
Carol, ever eager, dropped her bag to the floor and grabbed up the PADD.  “I’m not fond of wasted time myself,” she declared as she reached out to grab the stool-- _the_ stool--that hadn’t moved an inch in the past week.  Dragging it closer to her, Carol dropped herself onto it and beamed a brilliant smile at Khan before lowering her eyes to the screen and digging into the wealth of information at her fingertips.

  
Khan, teeth clenched and jaw tense, stared at her lowered head for a long moment before slowly lifting his gaze to Duval’s.  A gaze that Duval met head on, ignoring everything he was trying to say with that look, pretending she didn’t see the banked fire in his eyes.  Instead, she focused on sending a message of her own, relaying her thanks for his cooperation and--she hoped--her hope that he could continue to do so.  She held the look for only a moment and then very deliberately looked away.

  
The lab was silent for some time after that, the only sounds the occasional shift of a seat, the shuffle of papers or the rasp of a calloused finger over the surface of a PADD.  Duval, not wanting to interrupt, drifted toward the far side of the lab, eventually settling herself in a chair about as far from them as she could get.  She lounged there, feet on the table in front of her and her eyes on the pair across the room, both hunched over, both completely engulfed in the work in front of them.

  
“Commander, might I ask you something?”

  
Carol’s hushed question drew a huff from Khan.  “As you are here for the sole purpose of asking questions, I should think that goes without saying.”

  
“Yes, quite,” Carol said distractedly, leaning forward and turning the PADD slightly toward the ill-tempered man on the other side of the table.  “This weapon...has this reached prototype stage yet or is it still entirely conceptual?”

  
Duval watched Khan suck in a deep breath and let it out slowly before turning to look at what Carol was talking about.  “More than conceptual,” he said after only a cursory glance, “but only just--I have mapped out a rudimentary internal configuration, but nothing more.”

  
“It looks remarkably like a sidearm version of a ship-mounted phaser emitter.”

  
“I am glad to hear it,” Khan remarked, “as that is precisely what it is.”

  
Duval watched as Carol’s head jerked up, could only guess at the look in the other woman’s eyes.  “You honestly intend to turn a phaser cannon into a hand held weapon?”

  
“That is the intent.”  Khan paused, head cocked to the side and Duval could see those brilliant wheels turning.  “Admittedly, there are several challenges that will need to be overcome in the design.  In particular, I shall need to examine the functionality of currently utilized phase modulators to see if they can be modified to take the necessarily lower particle yield required of a sidearm and translate it into a damage potency similar to its shipboard counterpart.  If I cannot manage that with existing technology, I shall have to design an entirely new modulator.”

  
Carol went quiet at that--a quiet that Duval recognized.  She had heard it so many times over the past several months, from engineers and scientists alike.  It was the quiet that always followed when he’d said something so stunningly, brilliantly unheard of that it left even the geniuses dumbstruck.

  
“That’s...forgive me, Commander,” Carol choked out, “but that’s not _possible_.”

  
“Certainly it is,” Khan dismissed, reaching over to flick forward several pages on the PADD.  “As you can see, I have already begun the exact process, only in a slightly different way in relation to my work on the Vengeance.  I’ve nearly finished a redesign that will allow for a far more customizable weapons array with variable yields ranging from the standard 80 megajoules to well upwards of 750 megajoules--perhaps even as high as 1 gigajoule.”

  
And there was that silence again.

  
“You are actually serious, aren’t you?”  Carol leaned even further forward, excitement practically bubbling out of her.  “You really think you can manage that?”

  
“Of course I can,” Khan sniffed.

  
Carol studied the schematics on the PADD in front of her and now Duval could see _her_ wheels turning.  “I wonder, have you any experience with the concept of optronically-targeted weaponry?  It’s a fairly new concept, but I really think it would be particularly well suited to this sort of application.  I only recently read an article...”

  
At that point, Duval tuned them out--they were speaking their own language now, that special science language that generally left her wide-eyed and blinking.  It didn’t matter if she listened anyway.  She wasn’t there for her brains, after all.  Instead, she just watched them, allowed their conversation to drift into background noise.

  
It was going surprisingly well.  Far better than she’d expected and exactly as she’d hoped.  Before she knew it, they had actually managed to put together quite an impressive dialogue between the two of them.  Carol was certainly enthralled.  And Khan...well, he was being downright cordial.

  
Yes, it was exactly what she’d wanted.

  
And she absolutely _hated_ it.  Hated Carol for asking the questions.  Hated Khan for answering them. 

  
But most of all, she hated herself for caring.  For giving even the slightest damn.

  
And it brought home one very important realization. 

  
She needed to go.  Not just from the room, but from the whole damn thing.  She needed to move on from this entire ridiculous situation--get the hell out while she still could.

  
As she watched them, listened to their politely academic give and take, so very different  from anything that had ever existed between Khan and herself...an idea began to take shape.  An idea that could mean the escape that she so desperately wanted.  _Needed_.

  
It would require more thinking; more consideration and planning.  Luckily, if there was one thing she had at present, it was time.  Time to think.  Time to plan.

  
Time to hope that maybe, just maybe, she had found her out.

o


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing except for the things that belong to me.
> 
> A/N: Well, this wrote itself far quicker than I had anticipated. Hope everyone enjoys!
> 
> As always, shout out to my beta--my bestest (and only) baby sister--Xaraphis! Loves and kisses!

　　

**Somewhere I Have Never Travelled**

**by Alethnya**

 

 

* * *

_nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals_

_the power of your intense fragility:whose texture_

_compels me with the color of its countries,_

_rendering death and forever with each breathing_

_-ee cummings_

* * *

 

 

 

( _4 Days Later)_

　

"And these, under the saucer section...are those..."

　

"Torpedo turrets. Swivel-mounted and fully rotational."

　

"That’s...that’s absolutely brilliant! The directional aiming..."

　

"Will be varied and exceptional. Particularly when paired with the advanced targeting system I am designing."

　

"If your calculations are correct, the firing arcs for the photon volleys would be capable of covering the entire ship, forward to aft. That is simply..."

　

"Brilliant, yes. I am aware." Pause. "And there is no question of my calculations being correct. I can assure you that they _are_."

　

"Yes, of course." Another pause. A grin. "My sincerest apologies for questioning your work, Commander." Pause. "Do they _retract_ as well? Beneath the advanced shielding? You truly do think of _everything_."

　

Duval, seated at a table on the other side of the lab, bit her tongue and tuned them out once more. It had quickly become habit over the past several days, her attention waning and waxing at will as the other two occupants of the room kept up a steady exchange. Carol asked questions. Khan answered her questions. Carol made an observation. Khan commented on her observation. Carol complimented his brilliance. Khan accepted the compliments with all the grace of a man who had once nearly ruled the world.

　

All told, things were going well. Very well. Surprisingly well.

　

_Annoyingly_ well.

　

Khan, as good as his word, was most definitely on his best behavior, but even that only went so far. By the end of the day, his patience began to wear thin and his answers to Carol’s seemingly unlimited store of questions began to get shorter and sharper. To her credit, the younger woman didn’t let his increasing curtness stop her from asking--she simply changed the way that she asked. And her results were _so_ impressive.

　

Apparently, brazen flattery went a long way toward soothing his particular brand of savage, ego-driven beast.

　

It was actually quite funny to watch, really. With a few fawning words and a coaxing grin, Carol Marcus could wring another answer out of him...and then another...and then another...

　

Yep. Funny as hell to watch. _So_ amusing.

　

Just fucking _hysterical_.

　

Duval shifted in her seat, annoyed. At her. At him. But even more so at herself for being annoyed in the first place. _This is what you wanted,_ she reminded herself. _This is exactly how you wanted this to go. This--them--it’s your out._

　

Or it could be, if everything continued to fall into place so seamlessly. If she could prove that Carol Marcus was an even better fit for the job than she was, maybe her temporary stay on Io could be turned into something a little more long term. She knew it was a long shot--she doubted Marcus would be easily convinced, especially as it was his daughter they were talking about--but she couldn’t see any other way to extract herself from the impossible situation.

　

And now, more than ever, she wanted to be extracted. She wanted to be so far away that she could pretend that the whole thing had never even happened.

　

She glanced over at them again--Khan was leant over, pointing out something to Carol on the PADD between them--and her jaw clenched, teeth grinding together painfully. There had to be a way to make it happen. They worked well together. Anyone watching would be able to see that. Her being there was just...

　

Unnecessary.

　

Completely and totally unnecessary. Superfluous. Unneeded. And she _hated_ it.

　

"Is something wrong, Duval?"

　

The sound of her name snapped her out of her reverie, her eyes refocusing to find both Dr. Marcus and Khan looking at her--Carol with concern, Khan with that utter blankness that she knew better than to believe. Forcing a smile, she shook her head. "Nope, nothing at all," she denied. "Just thinking is all. Y’all are really on a roll...don’t let me interrupt."

　

Somehow, she suspected that hadn’t come out quite as airily as she had intended it to. Khan’s eyes narrowed, that left brow of his cocking upwards--questioning, speculative. Carol too wore an expression of mild disbelief. Yeah, she definitely needed to take greater pains with her tone. The last thing she wanted at present was to _talk_ about...well...anything, really.

　

"Seriously," she said, evening out her grin to something she hoped looked more believable, "I’m fine. Lot on my mind. Nothing to do with..."

　

Her communicator, sitting forgotten on the table in front of her, trilled, cutting her off mid-sentence. She snapped it up like the lifeline it very much was and flicked it open, heaving a large, internal sigh of relief. "Duval."

　

"Whatever you’re doing," Vazquez’s voice, curt and deadly serious like she hadn’t heard it in a long time, barked, "drop it now. My office ASAP. Marcus is inbound--less than fifteen minutes. He wants you here when he gets here."

　

Attention well and truly caught, Duval leaned away from the communicator slightly, every other thought gone straight out of her head. "Any idea what’s going on?"

　

"Yes," Vazquez admitted, "and you will to when you get here. So get here."

　

"Vazquez..."

　

"Ears only, Becca. Just get here."

　

"Right." Ominous as that sounded, she couldn’t deny that it sent a thrill of excitement up her spine. Also, talk about timing! No matter what it was, no matter how bad it was, she would welcome it with open arms. Because if this particular gift horse had a mouth, she wasn’t about to look anywhere near it. "On my way."

　

She snapped the communicator shut even as she lurched to her feet, nearly knocking her chair over in her haste. Flashing an over-bright grin toward her unwitting tormenters, "So I’m gonna...just...," she jerked a thumb toward the door even as she started edging her way toward it, absolutely buzzing with anticipation, "...go. I’m gonna go now. See what the Admiral needs."

　

She sounded like a crazy person. She could hear it--breathless excitement was just _not_ the response of a normal person to a conversation like she’d just had. Based on the looks they were both giving her, Khan and Dr. Marcus had heard it too and were in full agreement with her quiet self-assessment.

　

"I do hope everything is all right," Carol said, hesitant and earnest and looking genuinely concerned which was just...frustrating. "That sounded quite serious."

　

"It did, didn’t it?" Too enthusiastic. _Way_ too enthusiastic and sort of disturbingly hopeful at the same time--so much for trying to curb the crazy; time to give up the attempt and make a strategic retreat. "I’ll be back when I can," she said in a rush, waving at them carelessly. "You two just...carry on."

　

With that, Duval ducked out of the room before she could dig herself any deeper into the ridiculous hole she’d been floundering around in. Embarrassment burned at the edges of her awareness, but she dismissed it out of hand; refused to let herself truly acknowledge it. There would be plenty of time for self-flagellation later, when whatever was wrong had been dealt with. And something was definitely wrong. Something, as Carol Marcus had pointed out, truly serious.

　

Finally!

　

Barely able to hold back her grin, she double timed it to Vazquez’s office, adrenaline already spiking through veins that had gone without for far too long now. When she finally loped into the outer office--Allen wasn’t at her desk; _such_ a shame--she knew at once that Marcus had beat her there despite her best efforts. The Admiral’s personal security detail flanked the door into the office proper, a dead giveaway that Marcus was already inside. Duval gave each of them a quick nod as she approached them.

　

"Just go on in," the giant on the right said, returning her nod. "They’re expecting you."

　

"Right, thanks," she said with a quick grin before doing as instructed, pausing only long enough for the door to open before she stepped through.

　

Marcus and Vazquez were standing shoulder to shoulder on the far side of Vazquez’s desk, both slightly hunched over as they pointed at and commented in turn at whatever information the PADD between them held. Vazquez looked up at her entrance, his expression rigid with tension and something that looked strangely like panic glimmering in his eyes; Marcus didn’t even glance her way, just pointed at the chair in front of Vazquez’s desk.

　

"Sit down, Duval. No lip, no sass...just sit. I’ll be with you in a minute."

　

"Sir," she acknowledged, but pointlessly, because he was already focused entirely back on Vazquez.

　

"And you’re sure of this, Rafael? You’re absolutely 100% positive it’s the right call?"

　

"You don’t think it is, sir?"

　

"What I _think_ is that you’d better be damn sure you’re right because we can’t afford any fuck ups. What I _think_ is that the only reason I’m asking you is because you know the dynamics better than I do at present. So stop hemming and hawing and make a damn decision one way or another, Facility Commander Vazquez or I’ll get someone in here who’s actually capable of making the hard calls."

　

Vazquez straightened at that, suddenly looking every inch the officer that he was. He stole a look at her where she sat, his expression turning oddly fierce. "Yes," he said definitely, almost defiantly, as he looked back to the Admiral. "Yes, sir...it’s the right call. I feel it. I _know_ it."

　

Marcus, eyes narrowed, studied the younger man. "Well then, I guess we’d better inform Lieutenant Duval."

　

Oh, she didn’t at all like the sound of that and her excitement ebbed sharply. "Inform me of what?"

　

Marcus walked around the desk, perched himself on the edge and clasped his hands together in his lap. "I’ve got a job for you, Duval. I hate pulling you off your current assignment, even temporarily, but this can’t wait and you’re the best chance we’ve got to get the information we need."

　

Sweet, sweet music to her ears. Her momentary concern evaporated in the face of a nearly uncontrollable urge to jump up and hug Marcus--but only _nearly_ uncontrollable; she managed to squash it before having to tack that on to the day’s embarrassments. "Sir, tell me what needs to be done and I promise you, I’ll be on it immediately."

　

Marcus eyed her, gaze turning speculative, but said nothing, just motioned for Vazquez to hand her the PADD. "Should be a quick read," he commented as she accepted the device. "Being that it’s your old friends from Capella IV, you already know the basics."

　

Duval gave a hum of agreement, eyes devouring the information in front of her hungrily. The smuggling ring she’d infiltrated all those months ago had apparently recovered quite nicely from the blow she’d dealt. Apparently, the man in charge hadn’t been quite as irreplaceable as he’d believed himself to be. Unsurprising really. He’d been an arrogant shit and she’d very much enjoyed removing his piece from the game board. Unfortunately, it looked like the new boss was not only smarter than his predecessor but more ambitious and far more persuasive as well, if the reports she was looking at were accurate. "So they’ve actually managed to convince top Klingon brass to hold a meeting in the neutral zone," she shook her head. "That’s impressive."

　

"I’m more inclined to go with deeply concering, myself," Marcus said, shooting her a disapproving look. "Deep cover operatives have been reporting increased activity from this ring for awhile now, but nothing solid enough to necessitate further infiltration. Then, about a week ago, the first stirrings of something bigger started surfacing. The chatter since then has been steady and consistent and then just yesterday we were able to confirm the location and general time frame for the meeting."

　

"Which means I’m going to Archanis IV," Duval said with a nod, chewing her lower lip thoughtfully. "I’ve only ever passed through the Archanis system, sir, so my knowledge of the planet itself is sketchy at best. I’ll need a dossier if one hasn’t already been included in the literature."

　

"Taken care of," Marcus said with a nod. "A full write up is included in your access file. You’ll have time to familiarize yourself en route. Now, like I said before, I’m not thrilled about having to pull you from Io for obvious reasons, but seeing as you’ve already got a history with this group, I couldn’t see putting anyone else on this job. Before we go any further though, I want your assurance that this isn’t a mistake...I know your cover was compromised..."

　

"Not an issue," she interrupted with a shake of her head. "The only informed subject was neutralized. There was no opportunity between the breach and his death during which he could have relayed the information to anyone else. It’ll be tricky--the rest will no doubt have questioned the timing of my disappearance--but it’s nothing I can’t talk my way around."

　

Marcus nodded. "As per your usual, Duval, I’m leaving your parameters wide open. You’ve always worked best when you can work...creatively. If you’re on your game, this should be a fairly straightforward job. We aren’t looking to start a war," he paused, smirked a little, " _yet_. This is information farming, pure and simple. Ideally, I want you in that meeting. But ultimately, we just need the details. I’ve laid out my specific concerns in the file as well, so take careful note and get me the answers I want, Duval."

　

"Always do, sir," she cracked a grin, "one way or another."

　

The Admiral laughed, offering her a smirk in return. "That you do, Lieutenant."

　

"You’re laughing," Vazquez, who was definitely not laughing, ground out. "You think this is _fun_? Bec..." he stopped, grit his teeth. "Lieutenant Duval...this is _dangerous_."

　

"Of course it is," Duval agreed, still smiling. "That’s why it’s fun."

　

Vazquez frowned ferociously, dark brows nearly meeting across the bridge of his nose. "Thank you for reinforcing my decision. That attitude is exactly why we’re sending a shadow with you."

　

That announcement fell into the room like a bomb just about to detonate. Marcus winced. Duval’s eyes widened, her expression shifting instantly from pleased to pissed.

　

" _Excuse_ me?"

　

"Shit," Marcus spat as he stood up, turning to level a furious glare at the Facility Commander. "Vazquez, shut up or get out." He looked back at Duval. "Duval, let me explain before you erupt."

　

"I’m all ears," she snapped.

　

"Commander Vazquez is of the opinion that, due to your time away from the field and the outcome of your last assignment, you would be best served by taking backup with you on this one. I’m not sure I agree, but as he has been in more constant contact with you than I have over the past several months, I’ve agreed to allow it based on his observations."

　

Their conversation as she had walked in the room suddenly made sense and only served to piss her off even more. "Sir, I see the Commander in passing perhaps once or twice a week--I fail to see what he could have _observed_ during those meetings to justify _this_."

　

"You’re abrupt, short-tempered, paranoid and reckless," Vazquez answered, his temper as hot as hers. "You go on the offensive at the slightest provocation and you think everyone is out to get you. I fail to see how you could possibly think you _don’t_ need back up!"

　

"What the fuck are you even talking about, Vazquez? When have you seen me do any of those things?"

　

"It’s not just me," he hissed. "Others have noted the same behaviors and brought it to my attention."

　

"Who?"

　

"People who have nothing but your best interest in mind..."

　

Duval shot up out of her chair, palms slamming down on the desk between them. "Bullshit! You’ve been fed a load of absolute fucking _bullshit_ and I want to know who..."

　

"Enough!" Marcus roared, stepping in and pulling Duval away from the desk, inserting himself between them. "Vazquez...out. Now."

　

"But, sir..."

　

"Out!"

　

The Facility Commander swallowed down whatever he’d been about to say, threw Duval a searing look, squared his shoulders and marched out as if he hadn’t just been kicked out of his own office. Duval opened her mouth to lob another comment at his retreating back, absolutely steaming at his interference, but was stopped by Marcus’ finger pointed directly--warningly--in her face.

　

"Shut up," he bit out, then waited until the door closed behind Vazquez. As soon as it did, he rounded on her. "Outbursts like that don’t do much to convince me that Vazquez is wrong, Duval."

　

"Oh please," Duval scoffed, rolling her eyes, "you and I both know that he described just about every agent on the Section roster. And if that was an _outburst_ , sir, it was a fully justified one and you know it."

　

"Maybe so," Marcus admitted, leaning back against the desk again. "The point is, Duval, I don’t care. I don’t care if you don’t like what Vazquez had to say. I don’t care if you disagree with the plan that’s in place. It’s done and decided. Like it, don’t like it...that’s up to you. But again...I. Don’t. Care."

　

"Do you care about the success of the op, sir?" Duval crossed her arms over chest, defiant and showing it. "Because I can tell you right now--from experience--jobs like this? Two is a crowd. I need to be able to focus one hundred percent of my attention on the matter at hand. I can’t be worrying about anyone else while I’m doing that, sir."

　

"Were you listening to me earlier, Duval? I’ve given you wide open parameters. This op is under your control, start to finish. You want to assign her to the ship, assign her to the damn ship and tell her that if she steps so much as a toe off it, she’ll answer to me. You want to send her on a wild goose chase all over Archanis, send her on a wild goose chase. The point is, I’ve got a young Agent who needs field testing and I’ve been presented with a unique opportunity to send her out with one of, if not _the_ best I’ve got..."

　

"Wait, wait, wait," Duval cut in, eyes narrowing. "Field testing? You’re sending me out there with a _rookie_?"

　

"A rookie with potential," Marcus met her look straight on. "In fact, she reminds me of you--ambitious, smart and willing to check her conscience at the door. Who better than you to tell me if it’s all just packaging or if she’s actually got what it takes?"

　

And she knew. Taking everything she’d heard, everything she’d seen and everything that she’d already known before she walked into the office that morning--she put it all together and she just _knew_. Rather than pissing her off even more, the realization only served to do the exact opposite. Her anger banked, dying down to little more than burning coals beneath something that felt oddly like inevitability.

　

"It’s Allen," she said with a sigh. "You’re giving me Agent Allen."

　

"She comes with Vazquez’s highest recommendation, Duval. He’s been more than impressed with the work she’s done for him and thinks she deserves the chance to advance. He thinks--and rightly so--that your seal of approval would get the ball rolling for her."

　

Duval almost laughed, but it was far from a humorous sound. "And what about what I think, sir? Are you interested in _my_ opinion on the subject?"

　

"I already know your opinion," Marcus said with a shrug. "You don’t like her. Fine. You don’t need to like her. You just need to work with her. It’ll hardly be the first time you’ve had to put personal differences aside to get a job done."

　

"It’s not just me, sir. I can assure you that the dislike is entirely mutual. Allen can’t stand me."

　

Marcus snorted. "I seem to recall a certain evil genius nearly choking you to death the first time you met him and you found a way to make _that_ work. You really think Agent Allen will be more difficult to handle than he is?"

　

There was nothing she could say to that. It was, on the surface, an excellent point. But there was no way to explain to Marcus how completely different the two situations were without revealing far more than she was comfortable revealing. Again, that sense of inevitability came over her, and she knew that there was no point in arguing further.

　

She shook her head, giving in. "I suppose not, sir."

　

Recognizing her acceptance, Marcus smiled. "Glad to hear it, Lieutenant. Now, speaking of your boy..." Duval winced, hating that phrase just a little bit more every time he said it--if Marcus noticed, he ignored it. "How do you think he’s going to do without you for a few weeks? Do I need to be concerned?"

　

"He’ll be fine," Duval said, not even having to think about it. In fact, she realized, this was probably the most perfect opening she was ever going to have to plant the seeds for the future. "Honestly, sir...I’m not even sure my continued presence here is entirely necessary. He’s doing the work--more than that and no matter what he says to you, he’s _enjoying_ the work. He’ll keep doing it whether I’m here or not. And as for anything else...I think you already know how well you’ve got him cornered. He would never do anything to jeopardize his people."

　

Marcus drew back slightly, eyes narrowing in consideration. "I’m not sure I like the sound of that little speech, Duval. Sounds to me like you’ve been thinking about it a bit too much." He leaned forward. "You really think I’d pull you from this detail all together?"

　

Duval shrugged. "I don’t see why not, sir. I don’t add anything to the work itself. He’s collared far more by your leverage than he is by anything that _I’m_ doing. I really don’t see what my continued purpose here is. There are plenty of other people who would be far better suited to assisting him."

　

"Your primary purpose here isn’t to assist him, Duval. It’s to keep him in line."

　

"With all due respect, sir...do you honestly think that’s possible? If he really wanted to step out of line, there’s not a damn thing anyone on this station could do to stop him. He’s here because he _chooses_ to be, plain and simple."

　

Of all things she had expected from that, the Admiral’s mile-wide smile was not one of them. But smile he did, ear-to-ear and irritatingly knowing. Peeved, Duval shifted her weight from one foot to the other, hip cocking out and expression turning mulish.

　

"I really don’t see what you find amusing about that, sir."

　

"Oh, you really don’t," Marcus said, mirthful and galling--Duval suddenly remembered how little she actually liked this man nowadays. "For all your skills and all your training, you really have no idea at all, do you?"

　

Jaw clenching, Duval looked pointedly away from him, not at all appreciating being the object of his humor. "I still maintain that I’d be put to better use in the field, where I belong, sir. If you want even greater results out of his work, then you’d be much better served by pairing him with someone like Dr. Marcus. They’ve worked surprisingly well together over the past few days."

　

If possible, the Admiral’s smile turned even more smug than it had already been. It was lucky for the Admiral in that moment that she wasn’t armed--the temptation may well have proved far too great.

　

"I spoke to Carol just last night," Marcus admitted. "She tells a very different story than you do. See, she’s of the opinion that the only reason the brilliant Commander Harrison is cooperating so beautifully with her inquiry is because of you. According to her, you speak, he listens. You act, he reacts accordingly. You tell him to cooperate...he cooperates."

　

"That’s..." Duval floundered for a moment, thrown for an absolute loop, "...that’s...it’s not...you make him sound like a goddamn puppy and he is anything but that! Khan is no one’s lapdog, sir. He and I work well together, yes...but I don’t have that kind of sway over him. No one does. No one ever will."

　

"We’ll see about that," Marcus said, still wearing that infuriating smirk. "In the meantime though, I’d appreciate it if you worked your supposedly non-existent magic one last time before you leave and ask him to behave himself while you’re gone. Even if you don’t think it’ll do anything, let’s just call it better safe than sorry, shall we?"

　

"If you say so, sir."

　

"Good. Now get the hell out of here, Duval. Your transport is being prepped as we speak. I’d like you gone within the hour--two max. I’ll be staying for the duration of your absence, just to keep an eye on things. So the sooner you’re gone, the sooner it’ll be done and the sooner you can get back here--you know how much I hate spending extended time off-planet."

　

Hands clasped into fists at her sides, Duval gave a stiff nod. "Aye, sir. I’ll go make ready."

　

"Dismissed," Marcus said with a wave of his hand.

　

Duval turned on her heel and marched out, her exit every bit as proud and pissed as Vazquez’s had been. She walked out the door with her head high and her stomach absolute roiling, pulled in so many different directions by the discussion she’d just had that she felt vaguely nauseated. Once out in the corridor, she paused, considering everything that needed doing before she left.

　

She needed to pack an away bag, but that wouldn’t take long. She would have loved to just go straight to her room, grab her necessities and head directly to the transport. But she couldn’t just leave; even without Marcus’ directive and her own reluctance, she couldn’t just walk away without saying goodbye.

　

By the time she admitted to herself that she had to go to the lab before she did anything else, her feet were already taking her there, apparently functioning on their own orders. During the walk, she did her best to lock away the ridiculous things that Marcus had been babbling about there at the end. She had far more important things to concern herself with at present--she didn’t need to dwell on the fact that Marcus appeared to be under the impression that she had Khan under her thumb.

　

Just the thought alone was ridiculous enough to illicit a snort of laughter from her as she walked. Seriously, did Marcus know the man _at all_? Did he pay even the slightest attention? How could he ever, even for a moment, believe that anyone--especially _her_ \--could ever have that kind of power over a man like Khan Noonien Singh?

　

And Carol...how could she perpetuate that kind of tall tale? How could she, who had seen exactly how strained and stretched things were between them, tell her father anything even remotely like she apparently had?

　

It was just...it was stupid. All of it. Just completely and totally assinine and as soon as she got back from this mission, she was going to make that truth abundantly clear to both the Admiral and his daughter. She would convince them that she was right, that she had the better idea in all of this. They’d agree with her, eventually. They had to.

　

She would _make_ them.

　

That thought carried her to the door of the lab and she stepped through it with her mouth already open and ready to deliver her news.

　

"So I’m back, just like I said I’d be. Figured I should let you both know..." she stopped mid-step, her words choking to a halt. Carol Marcus stood alone behind Khan’s primary work table, a PADD in front of her and a stylus in her hand. Frowning, she looked around, but found the rest of the room empty. "Where..."

　

"He excused himself a few minutes after you left." Carol lay the stylus down, that concerned frown back on her face again. "But do, please, continue, Duval...what should I know?"

　

"Oh," Duval blinked, off balance. He was supposed to have been there--this was supposed to be simple and quick and painless. Why could he never be where she expected him to be? Why could he never make anything easy? "I’ve just left your father," she said, sounding slightly lost and hating it. "He’s sending me out on an assignment."

　

Carol’s frown deepened. "Now? When..." her voice trailed off and she shook her head as if to clear the thought, whatever it had been. "Well...nevermind that now. How long do you expect to be gone?"

　

"A few weeks," Duval answered, almost by rote; her mind decidedly elsewhere.

　

"Well that’s a shame. I looked forward to working with you further, Duval. Though I suppose you’ll be here when next I’m able to make it back out."

　

That caught Duval’s attention. She blinked, frowning. "Are you going somewhere?"

　

"I plan to return to Earth at the end of next week. I have other responsibilities to see to that require..."

　

"Stay," Duval said, quietly but firmly. "While I’m gone. Stay and work with him, Dr. Marcus. I would really appreciate it if you did."

　

The frown was back again. "I really don’t think.."

　

"The two of you work well together," Duval cut her off. "You understand what he’s doing far better than I do. If you give it a chance, I think you’ll see that you’re better for this assignment than I am. While I’m gone, you can try it. See how it goes."

　

Now Carol’s eyes widened, something like panic settling over her face. "Is that what you think? Really? Lieutenant Duval, as flattered as I am, you’re being far too generous. This isn’t...I never intended for this to be anything but a side project."

　

"And that’s fine, for now," Duval insisted. "But I’m not cut out for this. I belong in the field. It’s what I know...what I’m good at. This...all this..." she paused, shook her head. "This isn’t for me, Carol. But you..."

　

"No, you’re wrong," Carol disagreed, her voice rising in pitch. "I’m the one who doesn’t belong here; not really. More than that, I don’t want to stay. The Commander is unbelievably brilliant but I have absolutely no desire to subject myself to his coldness day in and day out for the foreseeable future."

　

"He’s not cold," Duval defended and probably more vehemently than she should have under the circumstances. "He’s...he’s hard, yes. But he’s not cold, not really. Just give it time, give _him_ time and you’ll see. He already accepts you..."

　

"He tolerates me," Carol corrected. "And only barely that. He has no more desire to work with me on a regular basis than I do with him."

　

"That’s just the way he is," Duval dismissed. "It was the same way when he and I first started to work together. Like I said, give it time. At least _try_ , just while I’m gone. It’ll only be a week longer than you planned to stay. Just...give me that extra week. Please."

　

"Lieutenant Duval..."

　

" _Please_."

　

Carol sighed, her shoulders lowering in defeat. "When he agreed to let me come here, my father described you as a force to be reckoned with. He certainly wasn’t wrong." She nodded once, reluctantly. "I’ll stay until you return. If nothing else, I can at least keep the Commander distracted while you are away. But I can promise you now, it won’t change anything. I _will_ be leaving once you’re back, Duval."

　

Duval knew when to push and when to accept what had been offered and run with it. So she nodded back, offering a tentative smile. "Good enough. For now. Who knows what a few weeks will do though? You might be surprised."

　

She turned away, getting out while she was still on top. "I’ll see you in a couple weeks, Dr. Marcus."

　

"I hope everything goes well, Lieutenant," Carol called after her. "Do take care of yourself!"

　

She stopped at the edge of the now open door, turning back with her hand on the frame to toss the doctor a smile. "I always do."

　

Then she was gone, leaving the lab behind with hurried steps. Proud of herself for laying as much of a foundation as she could, she shifted that problem to the back of her mind once more. There would be time to address it again once she returned, but for now, she had other challenges to tackle. First and foremost being to find Khan and fill him in on the situation.

　

Well, not too great a challenge, that. The options for where he might be were fairly limited. He spent the vast majority of his time between the lab and their quarters--he avoided the mess, the gym and the other public areas of the station like the plague. As she needed to pack anyway, she decided to go with probability and try their quarters first.

　

Which, as it turned out, was a very good decision. She walked in to find him pacing the living room, his favorite pastime of late. He ground to a halt as soon as he saw her, every inch of his body going instantly taut with tension and that careful blankness coming over his face, like shutters being thrown and latched against a storm.

　

Forcing the disconnect that had become her lifeline recently, Duval stood just inside the now closed door, holding herself as casually as she possibly could.

　

"I went to the lab. Carol said you left--everything ok?"

　

His brow twitched, but otherwise he remained utterly unreadable. "What did Marcus want?"

　

"Nothing near as bad as Vazquez made it sound," she said with a shrug. "He’s sending me out on an assignment. Nothing too difficult, but it’ll be good to be back in the field again."

　

His hands clenched at his sides, the knuckles showing white. "You are leaving."

　

She nodded. "Yep--Marcus wants me gone within the next hour or so. Sorry about the short notice, but that’s just the nature of the beast."

　

"How long?"

　

"If everything goes well, it should be no more than two weeks," Duval said with a shrug. "Don’t worry...I’m not leaving you on your own. I convinced Carol to stay on until I get back."

　

The brow twitched again. "Why?"

　

A beat.

　

"Why what?"

　

"Why did you feel the need to convince Carol Marcus to stay?"

　

Duval gave another shrug. "You don’t like to be alone in the lab. And as far as place fillers go, she seemed by far the best option. You might even like it better..." she grinned, hoping to ease the growing tension, "at least she actually knows what the hell you’re talking about most of the time."

　

Silence.

　

Complete and total silence; so thick and so heavy that Duval was sorely tempted to take a step back. She knew him, knew his tells. Somehow, despite it being exactly the opposite of what she’d been trying to do, she’d managed to piss him off. Royally.

　

"You honestly believe that I would prefer her company to your own? That you are nothing more than a _place filler_?"

　

Duval swallowed hard, a ball of nerves sitting like a lump in the bottom of her stomach. She didn’t want to do this. Not now. Not ever. "What I honestly believe is that we shouldn’t pretend this is something that it’s not," she said, throat dry but voice fierce. "I honestly believe that you can get along just as well with Carol Marcus as you do with me. There’s no need to get angry about it, it’s just a simple fact."

　

"Is it."

　

Not a question. Not even close. He was clearly angry now, the shutters thrown open just wide enough that she could see the mounting fury in his eyes.

　

"It is," she fired back, her own ire flaring. He had been itching for a fight for days now, and she was finally prepared to give him one. "This...that day in the lab...even what happened at the range...none of it has ever been about _me_. I see that--I _know_ it. And if you’re honest with yourself, you will too."

　

She’d always thought he looked like he could have been carved by a master hand--a masterpiece of sculpted marble, pale and perfect. It had never been a perfect analogy though. There was too much life in him, too much fire; he burned with emotion beneath that facade of cool detachment that he showed to the world. But now, in this moment, he was every inch the stone hewn idol of her most fanciful imaginings. Nothing moved, not a single muscle...he didn’t even appear to breathe.

　

"You appear to know me even better than I know myself," he said at last and his voice was low and furious and it rasped around the edges of the words. "You have evidently made my intentions and motivations the subject of exacting and exhaustive study, so please do tell me, Lieutenant Duval, what _has_ it all been about?"

　

To her, it felt as if all the oxygen had been sucked from the room, leaving her gasping in the vacuum left in its abscence. The look on his face, in his eyes, caught somewhere between anger and agony, clawed at her insides and tore at the walls she’d built around all those things she wouldn’t-- _couldn’t_ \--let herself think about. She didn’t need this right now. There was too much else, too many other things, and she just did not need this.

　

"I won’t...I’m not gonna do this," she blurted, the words tumbling over one another and coming out a stammering mess. "I’m not...I _can’t_. I can’t _do_ this. Not now."

　

She turned to bolt for her bedroom door, but didn’t make it more than a few stumbling steps before she collided with a wall of unrelieved black. Nearly falling backwards from the force of the unexpected impact, she gasped aloud as she was jerked back upright; Khan’s long-fingered hands wrapped tight around her biceps. She could feel the strength in him, immense and so tightly leashed that the muscles in his arms shook from the effort of holding it at bay. He held her at arms length, his eyes boring into hers like he would carve the answers out of her if he could.

　

" _Yes_ , now," he hissed and she could hear it in his voice, see it in the eyes she couldn’t look away from, how close he was to losing his usually iron-clad control. "I have given you _time_. I have given you _space_. I have afforded you the luxury of _soon_. But no more." His grip tightened, hurting now where it had only been uncomfortable before. "You will speak and you will explain and you will do it now, Rebecca. Tell me what you believe _this,"_ he gave her a single, sharp shake, "has been about if not _you_."

　

"Stop it," she snarled, pulling hard against his grip. "Stop pretending this means more than it does. Stop pretending this means anything at all! This...whatever you think this is...it’s not about _me_. It’s never been about _me._ All this has ever been about is you being _alone_ and me being _available!"_

　

He dropped her arms with a hiss, his head snapping backwards as if she had slapped him. "And t _his_ is why you’ve distanced yourself from me? You believe that I view you as nothing more than convenient?"

　

Duval rubbed at her arms, bruised and branded by the hotter-than-human sear of his touch. "Are you honestly going to tell me that you don’t? You’re lonely...I’m here. Tell me how I could ever be anything but convenient in that equation."

　

"You _are_ anything but convenient!" Khan roared, eyes twin points of molten blue. "You stand with those who have condemned me to my current state of reluctantly indentured servitude. You were assigned to be my keeper--in truth, my _jailor_ \--and by expressing interest of any kind in you, I am, by your own admission, playing directly into the fondest hopes of the very man who has taken my _family_ away from me. Precisely what part of that do you imagine makes you _convenient_ , Rebecca?"

　

There was sense in his words. Real sense. She could hear it plainly. But she couldn’t believe him. She couldn’t _let_ herself believe him.

　

"You’re lonely," she repeated, clinging fast to the truth that she had worked so hard to convince herself of. Somewhere, far in the back of her mind, the part of her that knew better was shaking its head in disgust. "I could have been anyone..."

　

Khan lunged forward, fingers once again wrapping tight around her upper arm, and yanked her to him, her right arm pressed tight to his chest. He lowered his head until his lips brushed the shell of her ear, quick puffs of breath a tantalizing warmth across her skin--the dual sensations stealing the words from her lips; the very voice from her throat.

　

"Do not," Khan growled into her ear, quiet and dangerous and sending a shiver down her spine, "reduce me to some mawkish whelp so desperate for affection that he will seek it from the nearest available female. Alone or not, lonely or not, I _need_ no one." His grip eased ever so slightly, the angle of his head lowering just so until he was...

　

Duval let out a strangled gasp as she felt the tip of his nose nudge delicately against the skin just below her ear. Her eyes slammed shut, breath coming in fits and starts. He was...

　

_Dear sweet Christ_ , he was nuzzling her neck.

　

Knees nearly buckling when he repeated the caress, her left hand lifted and landed hard against his chest, palm flat and the tips of her fingers clawing into the fabric of his shirt. He clearly liked her response, humming his approval in her ear and earning him another choked gasp.

　

"No," he said, and now his voice--that magnificent, rumbling baritone--was warm and thick and _hungry_ , "I _need_ no one. But _want_..." he pressed a, soft, open-mouthed kiss against that same bit of skin below her ear, the tip of his tongue darting out to steal a taste.

　

It was like an electric jolt through her body; that tiny touch sent her absolutely reeling. With a pained cry and a firm shove of her hand against his chest, she wrenched away from him, desperate for the distance he had erased.

　

"You don’t want me," she rasped the words as she stumbled away from him and in the vague direction of her room, barely contained panic in every syllable she spoke. "You can’t want me. I don’t _do_ this...I don’t...," she shook her head, hands coming up to press against her face, hiding her eyes. "This isn’t me and I can’t..."

　

"You _can_ ," he insisted, his own voice hoarse though she couldn’t for the life of her think why at the moment. "You must simply _let_ yourself, Rebecca."

　

She lowered her hands but kept them pressed to her cheeks. For the first time, she realized just how close she was to her door, her blind stumbling having done her something of a favor. "I...," she pictured her room behind that door and saw only the escape that she craved. "I have to go."

　

And she did, bolting for the door with every ounce of speed she possessed. It slid open just in time and she barely missed smacking hard into the automatic barrier. Reaching out blindly, she slapped her hand against the button to close and lock it, closing her eyes and trying to calm her breathing as she listened for the telltale hiss.

　

The hiss that started...but never finished.

　

Behind her, there was a squeal of metal, a grinding sound like she’d never heard before and then suddenly she was being spun around by a sharp pull just above her left elbow. The movement was so sudden and so sharp that she lost her balance, falling against the broad chest that now filled her doorway.

　

Khan’s left arm slid around her waist, a band of granite across her back, holding her firmly in place. His right hand grasped her chin, forcing her head up and her eyes to his.

　

"I grow tired of watching you run away from me, Rebecca Duval."

　

And then he was kissing her, the perfect bow of his mouth slanting over hers and driving every single thought straight out of her head. With a sound that was part groan, part whimper and all hunger, Duval sagged against him, her right arm slipping up and around his neck and her left collecting a handful of his shirt, pulling him to her with as much desperation as she’d pushed him away earlier.

　

Taking that as the tacit permission that it was, Khan shifted the hand at her chin up and back, the corner of her jaw cradled in the palm of his hand, fingers curled around the nape of her neck and his thumb rubbing a line from her temple to her ear. He ran his tongue along the seam of her lips, teasing, seeking and she opened for him, lips parting in a beautiful surrender. Ever the conqueror, Khan pressed his advantage, licking into her mouth with furious intensity and Duval, so much more a match for him than she’d ever let herself believe, replied in kind.

　

Passionate and utterly, utterly wanton, she pressed herself closer until she could feel him along every inch of her body and still it wasn’t close enough. The hand at his back ghosted upward, fingers sinking into his hair and tightening, pulling him even closer still, tugging sharply and then it was Khan’s turn to gasp, a surprised whine that dropped to a growl, wrecked and ragged. He turned them then, slamming her back against the unscathed side of the door frame, his arm at her back absorbing the worst of the impact and Duval hummed her satisfaction low in her throat and they somehow fell even further into and against one another.

　

As every wall she’d erected crumbled and everything she’d tried to bury came rushing out, Duval directed the flood, pouring it all into him with shameless abandon. And Khan, too long parched, drank her in as if she were an oasis, taking every drop she offered and demanding yet more still.

 

Finally, reluctantly, Duval pulled away from his lips, winded and exhausted and, for the moment, perfectly and unbelievably sated. Unable to look at him-- _too soon, not yet_ \--she pressed her forehead to the center of his chest, just above his sternum, trying hard to catch the breath that he had stolen from her. Khan--his own breathing gloriously, if less noticeably, wrecked--dropped his chin to rest atop her head, his arm staying firm around her waist and the hand on her head slipping all the way around to cup the curve of her skull, fingers playing in the wisps of hair at the nape of her neck.

　

They stood like that for a long moment, saying nothing, gathering themselves. Eventually and predictably, it was Duval who broke the moment, leaning back from him as best she could with her back still against the doorframe. Still avoiding his eyes, she glanced past him, gaze falling on the twisted wreckage that hung half in, half out of the wall opposite them and her lips quirked up into the shadow of a smile.

　

"You broke my door."

　

Khan shifted his arm from around her back, easing their embrace but refusing to release it entirely, his fingers catching the jut of her hip. "I did." He brought his other hand beneath her chin, tipping her head up and coaxing her eyes to his once more. "I am not sorry."

　

Staring up into his eyes, his guard down and his doors thrown wide open, she felt her heart turn over in her chest. For the first time, she felt none of the panic that had plagued her before. She still didn’t have a single clue what to do or how to do it--relationships of any kind were so far outside her comfort zone that a single kiss, no matter how earth shattering, couldn’t hope to shift her way of thinking entirely.

　

But now...after that...she thought maybe, just maybe, it might actually be something worth at least _trying_.

　

Hesitantly--terrified of making the wrong move--Duval released her death grip on his shirt, her hand lifting, fingers skating lightly across one of the cheekbones that had fascinated her for so long. "We definitely need to talk," she said, voice hushed. "But something tells me it wouldn’t be a short conversation...and as much as I suddenly don’t want to, I _have_ to go."

　

Khan’s fingers flexed against her hip, grasping tight. "Must you?"

　

"Yes," she affirmed, dropping her finger now to trace the curve of his lips with the pad of her index finger, eyes following the movement, fascinated and captivated by this new, intimate view of what she’d spent months admiring from afar. "I promise you, this is _not_ me running away again. I won’t say that it wasn’t before because you already know that it was. But now..." she couldn’t help herself, she leaned up onto her toes, replacing her finger with her lips and catching his lower lip in a quick, nipping kiss. When she pulled back, she met his eyes squarely. "There really is an assignment," she said quietly. "A legitimate one; an _important_ one."

　

Khan’s jaw tensed and he dropped his head forward, forehead resting against hers. "Why you? Why you and not one of the dozen unassigned Agents idling away on this station at any given moment?"

　

Duval--inwardly marveling at how good, how natural it felt, this new closeness--closed her eyes and smiled, enjoying the press of his face against hers, the warmth of his breath across her skin. "Because it’s an important job," she answered simply, "and I’m the best."

　

"But..."

　

"It’s who I am," she cut him off, voice firm. "You know that."

　

Khan sighed, held her tightly for a moment longer and then released her, stepping back and away. "I do," he admitted, "and I would have you no different."

　

Duval smiled at that, wide and true and honest, her eyes lighting up happily. She reached out, grabbed his hand and gave it a soft squeeze. "Thank you."

 

She caught a glimpse of the clock glaring out from the wall in the living room and cursed softly, her smile turning pained and her shoulders drooping. "And I really do need to go. I have less than an hour and I’ve still got to pack a bag and then I’ve got a ton of prep work to oversee."

　

"Then, by all means, Rebecca, do what you must. I do understand."

　

That got him another smile, if a smaller one, and then she was moving, pulling a small duffle out from beneath her bed and beginning to gather her personals. Khan lingered in the doorway while she packed and she could feel his eyes on her, watching-- _absorbing_ \--every move she made.

　

"Two weeks gone, you said?"

　

"If everything goes according to plan, yes," Duval confirmed, already nearly finished collecting her effects into a pile on her bed. Clothes--nondescript and generic and nothing at all like her current uniform--and books and a few sentimental trinkets that traveled with her everywhere she went. "Could very well be a little longer or a little shorter, depending."

　

"I assume that, in the meantime, I am expected to carry on as usual?"

　

"Of course," Duval said, then winced slightly. "Well, I can’t guarantee that actually. Marcus is staying for the duration of my trip."

　

Khan looked exceptionally nonplussed by that information. "Yes, unfortunately. We established that earlier."

　

She tossed him an apologetic look. "I mean the other one."

　

Now, he looked positively put out. "I suppose I should have expected that. I assume he is adamant that I not be left to my own devices."

　

"That’s an understatement," she said, grinning. "In fact, as per the Admiral, I’m to ask you to be on your very best behavior while I’m gone."

　

Left brow arching high, Khan crossed his arms over his chest. "You make me sound like a recalcitrant child."

　

Duval looked up at him, her expression speaking volumes. Khan narrowed his eyes at her for a moment before sniffing and looking away pointedly. "I shall... _behave_ ," he said, grudging but honest.

　

"Thank you."

　

"And when you return..."

　

"And when I return," she cut in, "you can go back to behaving as badly as you like."

　

"Yes, well...comforting as that is, that was not at all what I was asking, Rebecca."

　

"I know. And we’ll do that too. We’ll talk. Promise."

　

"I will hold you to your word."

　

"You always do," Duval replied, turning to shoot him a grin as she slid the zip shut on her bag. She tossed it onto her shoulder and crossed the room to him once more. "But I have one stipulation."

　

Khan’s brow arched, lips turning down in a half-hearted frown. "Which is?"

　

Duval moved quickly, pressing up onto her tip-toes to return the maddening favor of earlier--she dropped a kiss onto the side of _his_ neck, just behind the corner of his jaw before lifting her mouth to his ear. And then, as seductively as she could manage without losing her composure and bursting out laughing, she gave him his answer.

　

"Fix my door."

　

For the first time in far too long, Duval was granted the privilege of hearing him laugh and decided then and there that it was a sound that she fully intended to hear more often. When she got back, she was going to do everything she could to get him laughing and keep him laughing...Marcus and his bullshit be damned.

　

Deciding this was as good a moment as any, Duval ducked around him and out into the living room. Before she’d taken even a handful of steps though, she was stopped by an arm snaking around her waist and hauling her back against the hard wall of his chest. "You’ve told me extraordinarily little about this assignment," he murmured, mouth very close to her ear. "I’ve no idea where you are going, what you are doing..."

　

"I’ve told you as much as I’m ever able to tell anyone," she said firmly. "Don’t push for more because I won’t give it."

　

"I like this less and less," he declared hotly. Then his arm tightened, pressing her flush against him. His lips brushed her ear again and this time, she could hear the concern in his voice. "You will..." he paused, swallowed, and his arm tightened even more. "You will be careful, Rebecca," he whispered against her ear.

　

Eyes closing as she soaked in his worry--it had been a very long time since someone she cared about returned the favor enough to actually, truly _worry_. She knew she shouldn’t like it, but she did and she wasn’t sorry for that. "I’m always careful, Khan."

　

He pulled her closer, his other arm joining the first around her waist in a backwards embrace. His head lowered, cheek sliding to rest against hers. "Please, Rebecca...promise me that you will be safe. That you will take care."

　

Instinct lifted her hands, but practical experience failed her for a moment and they just sat, hovering over top his hands where they clasped over her stomach. Finally, she dropped them atop his, wrapping her fingers around his own white-knuckled ones and allowing herself one final moment of weakness. She sagged against him, head tipping back to rest against his shoulder as she squeezed his hands meaningfully. "I will," she assured him. "I promise."

　

He dropped another of those open-mouthed kisses on the column of her neck. "Thank you," he whispered against her ear. "The...very best of luck to you in your endeavor, Lieutenant Duval," he said quietly, releasing her from the cage of his arms.

　

Duval stepped away from him, hurrying for the door because she knew that if she didn’t go now, she might never go at all. At the door to their quarters, she turned around offering him a shy smile that felt oddly at home on her lips. "I’ll see you soon, Khan," she assured him, one foot already out the door.

　

"Soon," Khan agreed, attempting a smile and failing miserably.

　

She wanted to rush back to him, kiss the concern off his face. But she couldn’t. She had responsibilities waiting for her and if she let herself, she knew that she would ignore every single one of them for his sake. So, Rebecca Duval, her lips still swollen from Khan’s kiss and her mind more at ease than it had been in a very long time, started off down the hall toward the shuttle bay that housed the transport that would take her to Archanis IV.

 


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing except for the stuff that’s all mine.
> 
>  
> 
> A/N: Thank you to all who have read/reviewed/favorited/followed/left kudos! Also, and as always, thanks to my beta, Xaraphis! Your daily nagging keeps me focused and on task and I greatly appreciate it!

 

**Somewhere I Have Never Travelled**

**Alethnya**

 

　

_nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals_

_the power of your intense fragility:whose texture_

_compels me with the color of its countries,_

_rendering death and forever with each breathing_

_-ee cummings_

 

* * *

 

 

( _Two Days Later_ )

 

The ceiling was leaking; a slow, steady drip that pinged off the dented metal table that sat beside the bed. Duval, trying to get a few hours of sleep before the hard work really began, closed her eyes and let her mind drift, deep breaths in and out creating a compelling counterpoint to the rhythmic tattoo of plunks and plops. Across the room, laid out across the other narrow bed, Allen was tossing and turning and huffing, the frame of the cot groaning and creaking - her own addition to the sounds of their silence.

 

After a few more minutes of wordless complaint, Duval could hear the other woman sit up with a sharp curse.

 

“Would you please do something about that?”

 

Duval, one arm thrown over her eyes, let out a sigh of her own. “It’s one small leak, Allen. Just ignore it and get some sleep.”

 

“I can’t...its driving me insane! Just...move the table or something!”

 

“Can’t,” Duval said, more amused than annoyed, “the table’s bolted to the floor. Seriously...just block it out.”

 

The younger woman groaned and flopped back onto the bed. “This place is a complete fucking _dump_.”

 

Duval snorted out a laugh and lifted her arm, eyes dancing as she looked at her unwanted, unneeded, but still present roommate. “Welcome to the exciting and wonderful world of field work, _partner_. Not quite as glamorous as you were expecting, is it?”

 

A crack of thunder, louder than any previous, sounded and in the next moment, the bottom fell out of the sky and came pouring down as an absolute deluge. The slow, steady tinging sped up until it was an almost continuous string of sound.

 

“Oh my _God_ ,” Allen growled, launching herself out of the bed, snapping up her coat from where she’d dropped it at the foot of the bed and charging across the room to toss it over the table. Immediately, the metallic plinking shifted to muted and barely audible thuds as the drops of water soaked into the fabric. “ _There_ ,” she spat and Duval could feel the glare leveled her way, “problem solved. You can thank me later.”

 

Duval’s grin broadened. “Wasn’t bothering me,” she said with a shrug, “so I’ll hang onto those thanks, if it’s all the same to you.”

 

“Bitch.”

 

The epithet was sotto voce but the room was quiet enough that Duval heard her perfectly. It didn’t surprise her and it certainly didn’t upset her but it was also in the complete opposite direction of where they needed to be headed at the moment. They had gotten along surprisingly well at first - the trip to Archanis had been spent in surprisingly cordial discussion of the situation at hand with a lot of mutually acceptable silence bookending every bout of conversation. But once they had landed and Allen found herself more and more reliant upon Duval to maneuver them expertly through the unfamiliar landscape of an equally unfamiliar planet, her attitude had taken an absolute nosedive.

 

Duval got it. She did. Going into the field for the first time was a daunting, nerve-wracking and utterly terrifying experience, so she completely understood the other woman’s defensiveness. But understanding and acceptance were two very different things and they didn’t have time for temper tantrums.

 

“And here I thought you’d actually managed to check your attitude at the door,” Duval sighed, dropping her arm back over her eyes. “Pity. I was beginning to think you might actually turn out to be useful.”

 

Silence.

 

“It won’t always be this way, you know. You won’t always be the one in charge.”

 

“Is that so?”

 

“You know it is. Someday, someone else is gonna be the one calling the shots. Someone younger than you and smarter than you. Someone...”

 

“...exactly like you,” Duval finished for her, bored and sounding it. “I am deeply disappointed, Allen - that was just plain predictable.”

 

“It’s only predictable because you know it’s true.”

 

Beneath her arm, Duval rolled her eyes so hard it was borderline painful. She couldn’t even give the kid points for _trying_ at this point - there was no excuse for that kind of ham-fisted delivery. Especially not from someone who aspired to a life in covert ops.

 

Thoroughly annoyed now, Duval sat up, swung one leg down to the floor and pulled the other toward her, bent at the knee. Leaning forward, she propped her forearm on her thigh and pinned Allen with a hard look. “All right, look, kid,” she drawled, green eyes flashing as a bolt of lightning split the sky and lit up the room, “it’s not that I don’t appreciate the scene you’re setting here: ambitious youngster trying to claw her way to the top squares up on the grizzled veteran she plans on going through to get there. It’s one of the standards in our line of work. So the problem here isn’t with your storyline...it’s with your casting. See, you’ve picked me as your co-star and while I’m all kinds of flattered, I just don’t have the time or the energy for that particular line of bullshit right now. We’ve got a real job to do here, Allen; one that involves more than shuffling papers and organizing calendars. So how about you do us both a favor-dislodge that rather large chip from your shoulder, tuck it in your back pocket for later and focus on what we’ve been sent here to do.”

 

Over the course of that speech, Allen’s face had hardened into a look that was equal parts fury and determination. “I don’t like being talked down to, Duval.”

 

Duval cocked her head to the side, her own expression going cold. “And I don’t like being patronized by rookies who’ve never seen anything but the inside of an office, _Allen_. Save me from the one and I’ll see what I can do about saving you from the other.”

 

Allen‘s chin came up, the anger on her face tempering, turning more determined and Duval found herself once more seeing the flash of real potential in the woman before her. “You’re not always going to be able to dismiss me so easily.”

 

“By all means, convince me otherwise. Show me you can be something more than a desk jockey. _Impress_ me. But until you do," her eyes narrowed, tone going deadly serious,"stop tweaking my goddamn nose. I’m coming up short on patience at the moment and I’d really rather not run out entirely. Is that clear?”

 

Allen glared at her for a long, silent moment before she gave a single, snapping nod. “Crystal clear.”

 

“Good,” Duval said shortly. “Now get some sleep.”

 

“Aye...ma’am.”

 

Knowing how much the honorific must have cost her, Duval didn’t comment on it. Instead, she lay back down, arm dropping once more over her eyes and legs stretching out and crossed at the ankle. The creak of the bed across the room told her that Allen had followed suit and all too soon, the room had gone still and quiet, the silence broken only by the steady drumming of the rain on the single window.

 

* * *

 

It was three days later and just on the edge of dusk when Duval walked into an absolute dive of a bar in the least reputable part of the city. She paused just inside, eyes unobtrusively scanning the crowd, taking quick and careful stock of the handful of obvious regulars scattered about the room. Rough, blue collar types, she noted, filling up on booze and bawdy jokes after a hard day’s work. Unremarkable, non-descript and utterly perfect for her immediate purposes - the contact she’d spent the past several days tracking down had picked exactly the right kind of place for this meeting.

 

The same contact who was currently sitting at a table in shadowed recesses of the back of the bar, a beer before him and a pensive look on his face. Sauntering up to the bar, Duval ordered a beer of her own, tossing down a few coins of the local currency as she scooped it up and started toward the man in question. Caleb Masterson was a strategic gold mine-a man with a family that he loved enough to make supporting them his first, last and only priority; morally flexible enough to run in all the wrong but well-paying circles but possessed of just enough conscience to keep him trustworthy.

 

Or at least, more trustworthy than most. Which, to be honest, was about as good as it got in her line of work.

 

Without a word, she slid into the seat across from him, setting her beer down even as she dipped her free hand down to slip a thick fold of credits from her coat pocket. In a practiced exchange, Masterson met her halfway under the table, sliding the offering from her grasp and tucking it away in his own pocket all within a span of seconds. That done, Duval rested both forearms on the tabletop, her beer bottle cradled between her two palms and a faintly amused smile on her face.

 

“Long time, no see, she drawled, her accent thick like molasses on her tongue. He might know what she was, but he had no idea who she was and she wanted to keep it that way.

 

“I know why you’re here,” Masterson muttered, ash blonde head tipping back as he took a long pull from his beer. “And there’s no way I’m gonna be able to get you anywhere near that meeting.”

 

Straight to the point - another thing she had always found incredibly useful about Caleb Masterson.

 

“I didn’t figure you could, which is why I hadn’t even planned to try,” she said with a shrug. “Luckily, I don’t actually need to be _in_ the meeting to get what I need from it. That’s where I need your help.”

 

Masterson had started shaking his head before she’d even finished talking. “I’m not gonna be able to get _her_ in either. They’re playing this one close.  Real, real close. The new boss, he says that was the problem before - too many eyes and ears and mouths and not near enough security measures to keep control of 'em all. Shit...I don’t know if _I’m_ even gonna get let in on this one.”

 

Confused but taking great care to keep it from showing on her face, Duval shifted a bit in her chair, mind working furiously. Her?

 

Her _who_?

 

Duval smiled at him - and if it was a thin and utterly forced thing, the dimness of the bar kept him from looking close enough to tell. “Like I said, I’d figured that much. That’s why I have other plans in place. Speaking of," she said, lilting the words and keeping all hint of disquiet from her voice, “sounds like you’ve already spoken to... _her_?”

 

Nodding, Masterson began to pick at the label on his beer, coarse fingers rolling and pulling at the peeling paper. “Stumbled across her yesterday morning,” he affirmed, shaking his head again and shooting her a slightly frazzled look. “She’s not...well...she makes me nervous. Know you needed to use a fresh face, but she’s about as wet behind the ears as it gets. I mean, nothing I can’t handle, but she just don’t play the game as well as you always did.”

 

Oh. _Her_.

 

Allen.

 

Allen, who was supposed to have been doing nothing more than the very lightest of recon work and keeping herself well out of sight. Allen, who she had very specifically ordered to keep her eyes and ears open and her mouth shut. Allen, who had apparently decided to disobey every single bit of direction she’d been given and who was now, it seemed, working off her own, inexpertly written script.

 　

Wonderful. Just...fucking... _wonderful_...

 

Duval was gripping her beer bottle so hard that it hurt. “Yeah, well,” she said, her voice going high, “we all have to start somewhere, right? But don’t worry, Masterson...she might think otherwise, but it’s never been my intention for her to get into the meeting. Just get her in at the bottom, keep her off the radar. She’s an investment for the future; her check’s nowhere near ready to be cashed.”

 

“Not gonna lie,” Masterson said, now twirling the fully detached label between his fingers, “that’s a relief. I was wondering where all that common sense you usually have had gotten to.”

 

“Is she really that bad?”

 

Masterson shrugged, gave her a quick flash of a grin. “Not really. Honestly, if I didn’t have you to compare her to, I’d say she was pretty good even. But she ain’t you, that’s for sure...no matter how hard she tries to be.”

 

Duval let out a bark of laughter, lifting her beer and taking several healthy gulps. “Like I said, gotta start somewhere. Now, nevermind her for a minute,” she tapped a finger on the table, “what I really need from you, Masterson, is the location of the meeting and the exact time. You get me those bits, I’ll take care of the rest.”

 

“And if I do?”

 

“A thousand more,” Duval said immediately, “and, as always, a promise of more next time your services are needed.”

 

“Sounds just about right,” Masterson said with a nod and a smirk. “Always a pleasure doin’ business with you, ma’am.” He drained the last of his beer, plunking the empty down on the table. “Fountain Square on the other side of town-meet you there in two days. I should have what you need by then.”

 

“Two days,” Duval acknowledged with a nod of her own. As soon as Masterson was gone, the pleasant expression dropped off her face, replaced with a fury like nothing she had felt in a very long time. “I’m gonna kill her,” she muttered to herself, lifting her beer and downing the last of it. “I’m gonna absolutely _murder_ her.”

 

It was all she could think about as she stalked out of the bar. She was still thinking about it as she turned corner after corner on her way back to their sad excuse of a room. And it was still the only thought in her head as she trudged up the rickety stairs to the top floor of the inn. She threw the door to their room open far harder than necessary, pleased as punch to hear the squeal of surprise from the far side of the room. She stepped inside, taking care to close the door with as much dignity as possible before turning back.

 

Allen stood near the window, hand over her chest and eyes wide. “What the...”

 

“The only thing,” Duval cut in, standing very still with her arms at her side, fists clenched tight, “that I want to hear from you right now, Allen, is an explanation. A very, _very_ good explanation.”

 

For a moment, it looked like she was going to try to play dumb, her expression falling into a calculated look of confusion. To her credit though, it appeared she very quickly thought better of it, her face shifted until she was staring at Duval with pure defiance. “You said it yourself, Duval - we have a job to do. There was no way _you_ were going to be able to do it, so I knew that I needed to step up.”

 

Closing her eyes, Duval took a deep breath, held it and then blew it out slowly from between her teeth. She opened her eyes again, directing a blade-sharp glare at the other woman. “Explain. Better.”

 

“You _blew_ your cover the last time out,” Allen spat out. “Even if they don’t know who you’re with, they know that you disappeared at the same time that their leader was killed. You may have been able to sell Marcus that load of bull about you being able to talk your way around it, but they’re never going to trust you enough to let you into that meeting, Duval!”

 

“Obviously not, _Allen._ But as I don’t actually need to be _in_ the meeting to be in the meeting, it wasn’t something I was too worried about.”

 

“But you told Marcus...”

 

“It doesn’t _matter_ what I told Marcus,” Duval snapped, patience paper-thin. “I had this situation well in hand, Allen. I had a plan. Frankly, I still have a plan and...” she trailed off, a thought striking her. She narrowed her eyes at the younger woman, coldly furious. “You know what, never mind. What I really want to know is how _you_ know what I told Marcus? More than that, how the hell did you know about Masterson?”

 

Allen lifted her chin, proud and still defiant. “You’re not the only one who has sources.”

 

Mind working quickly, Duval studied the woman in front of her, possibilities and probabilities weighed and discarded until finally...

 

“ _Vazquez_ ,” Duval hissed, taking a step toward Allen. “He’s been feeding you info.”

 

Allen’s smile then was almost triumphant. “The Facility Commander has my back,” she said, haughty and irritatingly smug, “because he knows that I have his. He _trusts_ me to see that things are done correctly.”

 

There was something in her voice, in her tone. Something...

 

“If you think that anything you’ve done here so far is _correct,_ little girl, you’ve really got another think coming.”

 

“Commander Vazquez sent me with you because he knew that I was a better choice for getting the information that Admiral Marcus wanted.”

 

Duval barked out a laugh. “If that’s what he told you, then the bullshit’s been flowing both ways. Allen...I don’t know if it’s escaped your notice, but Vazquez has feelings for me. He sent _you_ to make sure that _I_ was ok...not because he thought for a second you could do a better job than I could!”

 

Allen went rigid at that, her hands fisting and her expression turning murderous. “No. Even Admiral Marcus agreed with the Commander.”

 

“Admiral Marcus never did anything of the kind,” Duval corrected, pieces slowly falling in place. “Admiral Marcus approved of you tagging along only so that I could evaluate your ability to follow orders in a field situation. And I’ve gotta tell you, Allen...so far...you’re really not going to like what I have to report to him.”

 

“No,” Allen repeated, shaking her head, “that’s not true. The Commander _told_ me...”

 

“The Commander _lied_ to you, Allen.”

 

“He wouldn’t lie to me.”

 

“You keep telling yourself that, sweetheart, if it makes you feel better. But I gotta tell you, that kinda naivete might have gotten you into Vazquez’s good graces-he’s all about that whole big protector bullshit - but it’s really not doing you any favors with me, honey.”

 

_That_ got a reaction. Allen stalked toward her, fairly brimming with fury and stopped just in front of her, looking down at her from her extra few inches of height. “I’m _not_ naive. Don’t try to tell me what Vazquez would or wouldn’t do. You may think you know him, but you don’t - not like _I_ do.”

 

Oh, she _knew_ that tone. That tone spoke of a whole different type of knowing; a whole different level of connection. The last pieces of the puzzle fell into place and Duval let out a snort of laughter. “Well, well, well...isn’t that cute. What? You think that just because you’re sleeping with him that he wouldn’t lie? You think that just because you’re _fucking_ him that he wouldn’t turn around and _fuck_ you in an entirely different way? Yeah, that’s not naive _at all._ ” She arched a brow, expression halfway between amusement and pity. “You’ve got a hell of a lot to learn about this life and the people who live it, little girl.”

 

Allen let out a snarl and charged forward, fist cocked and ready to fly. Duval, instincts kicking in, reached out and caught her fist mid-swing. She ducked under, turned, twisted Allen’s arm up behind her and slammed the other woman against the nearest wall. Torquing her arm just enough to illicit a pained grunt, she leaned forward and up, lips hovering near Allen’s ear.

 

“You ever make a move on me like that again, honey, and so help me, I’ll drop you like a fucking rock,” she said, voice tight with quiet malice. “Now, you seem to be under the impression that you’re the one in charge here,” Allen tried to push away from the wall; Duval, without missing a beat, hooked a boot around one of Allen’s and yanked, the other woman falling even harder against the wall. “Allow me to relieve you of that gross misconception, Agent Allen. _I_ am in charge of this op. _I_ call the shots. Now, what’s done is done...lucky for you, your little experiment with insubordination hasn’t actually impacted my plans at all. What it _has_ done is given you a stellar opportunity to turn a disaster into a success for you. If you’re at all interested to hear how, you’ll shut your mouth and listen to me. If you’re not, feel free to try me again. I won’t be as nice the second time; I promise you that.”

 

She pushed backwards then, letting go of Allen’s arm and stepping away. Slowly, Allen turned, expression shuttered now and all that excess of attitude nowhere to be seen. Leaning back against the wall, rubbing her wrist, she gave a small nod. “I’m listening.”

 

“I know you’re not gonna believe this,” Duval said, moving toward her narrow slip of a bed and plopping down onto the end of it, elbows resting on her knees, “but I do... _admire_...you’re initiative. It was foolish and downright stupid, but you saw an opportunity and you took it. Can’t really fault you for that. But I had you on light recon - eyes and ears open and mouth shut. So what I _can_ fault you for is disobeying my very specific orders. You could’ve ruined this whole thing before we’d even gotten started.”

 

“But you already said that I didn’t.”

 

“I did say that,” Duval agreed even as she shot the other woman a warning look. “But it doesn’t change the fact that you could have. Now, I really don’t want to have to go back to Marcus and tell him about this. You may not think so, but a bad word from me and your career would be well and truly done. I call you out and you’ll be shuffling papers for the rest of your Section life. I’d hate to do that to anyone - even you. So now that you’ve found your way into the lower levels of this ring, I’m gonna let you play the part. Make a few friends, make a name for yourself over the next few days. Get them to trust you. You might even learn something useful. Most importantly, if you can manage it, it’ll make for one hell of a report to Marcus once we get back.”

 

Allen’s eyes narrowed, distrust plain on her face. “Just like that? You’d pretend this never happened and sing my praises to Marcus?”

 

Duval nodded. “I would.”

 

“Why? What’s in it for you?”

 

“The pleasure of having helped a young Agent find her feet in the often cruel and always scary world of espionage.”

 

It was Allen’s turn to snort out a laugh. “Now who’s feeding who bullshit? Why would you _really_ do it? What’s in it for you?”

 

Duval grinned, sharp and vicious. “Oh honey, you make this work and I promise you that I’ll talk you up like you’ve never imagined I could. Because the higher I push you, the quicker Marcus will pull you from Io and reassign you elsewhere. And trust me, sweetheart, I want you _off_ Io.”

 

Allen, still rubbing her wrist and now shifting her shoulder uncomfortably, returned Duval’s grin with one of her own. “Well that’s convenient, because I want off Io myself.”

 

Duval pushed herself further onto the bed, dropping her head to the pillow and crossing her still booted feet at the ankle. “Then it sounds like we have an understanding.”

 

Silence.

 

Allen shuffled across the room toward her own bed, pausing just at the foot of Duval’s. She didn’t turn her head, didn’t look at Duval’s supine form. “And that’s really it? I thought you’d be more pissed off.”

 

“No point,” Duval said with a shrug. “What’s done is done. I’ve made myself clear. We appear to have reached an accord. I, for one, am all good for the moment. So if you don’t mind, I’m gonna catch a little shut eye and you should too. Busy days ahead for both of us, kid.”

 

“Right,” Allen said, resuming her trek across the room. Her bed squeaked as she threw herself onto it. “Busy days.”

 

Neither of them said a word for the rest of the night.

 

* * *

 

Two nights later, Duval sat on a bench in one of the wealthier bits of the city, eyes on the fountain bubbling away in the center of the small square as she waited for Masterson to put in an appearance. It was a pretty spot, quiet and quaint and about as far removed from their last meeting spot as it was possible to imagine. All part of the game though-it was never a good idea to meet in the same place twice.

 

Things had been thankfully calm since her confrontation with Allen. The other woman had kept to her end of the bargain, had even begun to show just the slightest bit of respect. Not that Duval believed a word of it, but at least Allen was keeping up appearances. If they could make it through the rest of this trip like this, then she’d count it a rousing damn success.

 

And, frankly, the sooner they were done, the better as far as she was concerned.

 

It was...a new feeling for her and one that she wasn’t entirely sure that she liked. Before, she’d lived for this; had reveled in the thrill of the mission, the adrenaline spike of danger and the rush of the game. She’d never wanted her assignments to end. She certainly had never been in a rush to get back to Earth or Io or wherever her designated close out point had been.

 

But then...

 

_The flash of want in violently blue eyes, the crush of the strongest arms she’d ever felt, the brush of velvet-soft lips, the taste of aching passion in the sweep of his tongue, the promise of so...much...more..._

 

...she’d never had anything to rush back _to_ before.

 

Duval shivered, her eyes slipping closed and a chasm of sheer _yearning_ opening wide in the center of her chest. Her hands gripped the edges of the bench, squeezing tight. How could she have changed so much, so fast? How could a few months have done _this_? She missed Khan. She didn’t want to, but she did. This thing between them, whatever it was, it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t last. Like she’d told him before, one day, he would be gone and she would be exactly where she was, living the same old life she’d always lived. It terrified her to think that, when that day came, it wouldn’t be enough anymore. That she would feel adrift in a life that she had worked so damn _hard_ to build. And she was trying. She really was. Trying anything and everything to keep her mind off of him, but nothing was working and she...

 

She _missed_ him.

 

The air around her shifted and she threw her eyes open just as Masterson dropped onto the other end of the bench. Her mind instantly cleared, focus turning sharp. That was a relief at least - when the work was immediate, she could dismiss it all; it was only in the lulls between the action that her _feelings_ got the better of her. She kept her eyes focused forward, not looking at him at all and she suspected he was doing exactly the same.

 

“Four days from today. 2400. Abandoned factory on the easternmost edge of the city. Three windows on the third floor will be lit up.”

 

Committing the information to memory, Duval dipped her hand into her coat pocket, palmed another thick roll of credits and then slid it across the seat of the bench. Masterson lifted it from her with only the barest touch of his fingers.

 

“Our thanks, as always, Masterson.”

 

“My pleasure, as always,” he replied. “Your girl’s doin’ fine, by the way. Keeping her head down and her eyes open. Don’t know if she’ll get anything worthwhile out of it though.”

 

“Don’t figure she will,” Duval said softly. “As long as she keeps her nose clean, I’ll count it a job well done. Thanks for keeping an eye out though. I appreciate it.”

 

“Always like to do a good turn where I can,” he paused and Duval could see his grin out of her peripheral vision. “‘Course, it’s just as much for my good as hers. She goes down, she could take me with her. I’d like to avoid that if at all possible.”

 

Duval smiled. “You and me both. You know how long it would take me to replace you?”

 

“Like you could,” he joked, rolling to his feet and stretching. “They don’t make ‘em like me anymore.”

 

“No, I don’t ‘spose they do,” Duval acknowledged. “Now get the fuck outta here before someone sees us. People might talk and I’ve got my reputation to think of.”

 

Masterson let out a guffaw of laughter, turned and gave her a single nod. “‘Til next time then?”

 

“Of course.”

 

And then he was gone, slipping back into the night like he’d never been there. Duval, the information she needed now in her back pocket, settled back against the bench. Four days was a long time. She decided to kill a little of it where she was, trying to absorb the peace of this quiet little place as best she could.

 

She’d never really enjoyed the quiet before; but now...with good, if guilty, thoughts to fill it, she found that she didn’t mind it quite so much.

 

* * *

 

Four nights later, dressed all in black and moving between shadows with the surety of one who had lived most of her life within them, Duval made her way to the easternmost edge of the city. She hadn’t scouted the area, hadn’t wanted to take the risk of running into anyone who might recognize her. Not that she’d really needed to. This task was going to be simple enough - get in, record the meeting, get out. Easy. She was a dab hand at breaking and entering after all.

 

It was just coming up on 2200 when she spotted the building in question, an abandoned factory with three windows on the third floor lit up bright, just as Masterson had said. The man really was invaluable - expensive, but invaluable.

 

She stopped a block away, surveying the dimly lit street and taking note of the two guards stationed at the door, leaning against the building and looking for all the world like they were just a pair of buddies enjoying a late night smoke break together. Chances were, every door would be manned thus, which was fine by her. She certainly wasn’t planning on using a door to get in.

 

A few minutes later, she had skirted the building and found her in - a dark, narrow alley that ran along the side, the entrance positioned just right to allow her to slip down it without drawing the attention of any guards. From there, it was quick work to scale the wall, the crumbling, cracked facade providing more than enough hand and foot holds so that she didn’t even need to waste time digging out the specialized climbing gear stowed in the small pack on her back. She was on the far side of the building from the lit windows and when she reached the third floor and looked in the grime-caked glass of a broken window, she couldn’t see any light at all. She tested the frame and smiled to herself as it pushed up with little to no resistance. It was the work of a few moments to shimmy it open enough for her to slip inside.

 

Once in, she crouched low, easing her pack off her back and bringing it around in front of her. Releasing the closure, she reached inside and pulled out a pair of night vision goggles, sliding them over her head and flicking them on. Immediately, the entire floor opened up to her gaze, every decaying inch of the factory lit up with razor blade sharpness and limned with an eerie green glow. Slipping her pack back on, she picked her way carefully over rotting floorboards and around rusting pieces of archaic equipment and the random detritus of dereliction.

 

Soon enough, she had found her way to the well-lit area on the far side of the building. She flipped the eye-pieces on the goggles up, taking quick and careful note of the table and chairs that had been set up in the cleared space within the light. Three men sat at the table-all of which she recognized from her previous sojourn with the ranks of this particular organization. The one in the center she knew immediately to be the new boss and she mentally congratulated herself for not even trying to bullshit her way into this meeting.

 

Chen Meng-Bao was everything she had suspected the new boss to be-smart, ambitious and nothing at all like the idiot whose place he’d taken. On top of that, he was one of the few who had never fully trusted her the first time around. Had she tried to work her way back in, he would have marked her in a heartbeat.

 

Having seen everything she needed to see, she retreated silently, lowering her goggles once more and slinking through the shadows. A few minutes later, she had found a hiding spot to tuck herself into between a wall and a heap that had once been a useful piece of equipment. Gloved fingers sought out the tiny hidden pocket in the inner lining of her sleeve and pulled out the even tinier recording device. There was still nearly two hours until the meeting proper, but you never knew what kind of information the three men in that circle of light might reveal. So, activating the device, she clipped it to the outer edge of her sleeve and settled in for the long haul. Marcus wanted all the information he could get; she’d make sure he got more than even he had imagined.

 

* * *

 

Two days later, the device containing an absolute plethora of quality intel tucked safely away in that tiny pocket on the inside of her sleeve, Duval was pacing the floors of their little hole of a room, positively fuming.

 

Everything had gone off without even the slightest hitch. She’d gotten what they came for and gotten herself back out again without setting off even a hint of an alarm. But when she’d arrived back at their room, Allen hadn’t been there. Duval hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, dismissing it as the younger woman digging herself in even deeper. Which was fine by her, she certainly wasn’t wanting for the company.

 

But then, Allen hadn’t shown at all the following day either.

 

And now, it was coming on night time of the day after _that_ and the girl still hadn’t returned and Duval knew that something must have gone wrong. Allen knew the timeline; knew that they were set to leave the next morning.

 

Of course, the possibility very much existed that the stubborn little shit had made the executive decision to lengthen their visit for her own purposes. If that was the case, Duval was going to rip her a new one. They had been on Archanis for coming up on two weeks now and she was officially done with the planet. She was ready to be back on Io...ready to be back with Khan, despite the lingering questions and concerns and nerves that plagued her. She had no idea where the...the _thing_ with him was going, but she’d been away long enough that she was at least ready to start discussing it.

 

But there was another possibility as well. The possibility that her inexperience had gotten the better of her...

 

Two strong knocks sounded against the door of the room, freezing Duval in her tracks. Bending to snatch her phaser from the front pocket of her pack, she knocked it to stun and lifted it to a ready position as she edged over to the door. Allen wouldn’t have knocked and she couldn’t think of anyone else who would have reason to be on the other side of that door.

 

Leaning against it with her free hand hovering just over the knob - Archanis really was a relic of times gone by-she schooled her voice to a pleasant lilt. “Who’s there?”

 

“It’s Masterson. Let me in.”

 

_Fuck_.

 

This could mean absolutely nothing good.

 

Duval turned the knob, pulled the door open but kept herself tucked behind it, her phaser leveled at the space where her visitor would enter at approximate shoulder height. Masterson walked in, arms up - oh, but he _did_ know the game - and she shut the door firmly behind him and brought her other hand to the phaser, not lowering it despite the solid history they shared. This was off script and off script meant that all bets were off. He made one wrong move and she would, regardless of their pleasant association, drop him where he stood.

 

“What’s going on?”

 

Masterson, arms still up, wore a distinct look of unease as he stared down the phaser. “Your girl’s in trouble.”

 

“I figured that much. You can save the details, because I don’t really care about them. Just give me the basics.”

 

He nodded, lifting his eyes to her face. “The basics are that she’s got a big mouth. She said the wrong thing to the wrong person and now she’s being held as a potential mole. The big boys are all gone off planet, but I don’t doubt the scabs who were left to clean up the loose ends will be contacting them very soon. You know Chen - he’ll be back here as quick as he can if he thinks he’s got a Federation spy on the hook.”

 

“Son of a bitch,” Duval spat. “How long ago?”

 

“Just last night,” Masterson assured. “I heard about it first thing this morning and came looking for you as soon as I could. She starts singing and it could very well be my ass...”

 

“I know,” Duval snapped. “And speaking of, you’d best get on out of here. Don’t need to go tempting fate any further.”

 

Masterson immediately made for the door. He paused just as she opened the door for him. “Same building. I’d say you have at least a day or two before the big bosses can get back here - maybe more, depending. But if I were you, I’d make a move quick while they’re not expecting anything. As far as I know, she hasn’t breathed a word about you yet.”

 

“Good to know,” Duval dropped the phaser, gave him a nod. “I owe you, Masterson.”

 

“You make this right and we’re all good,” he said, then ducked out the door. She could hear his heavy steps descending the stairs rapidly even as she closed the door shut behind him. She leaned against the door, forehead resting on the knotted wood.

 

This. This was why she hadn’t wanted a rookie tagging along. This was why she hadn’t wanted Allen getting too close to the action. The idiot girl had gone and gotten herself well and truly fucked...and now it was up to Duval to pull her ass out of the fire.

 

　

　

 

 

　

　

　

　

　

　

　


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing except for the stuff that’s all mine.
> 
> A/N: Ok, so...bit of a violence warning on this chapter. Nothing horribly graphic, but definitely more intense than anything that’s previously occurred in this story. Also, it’s another beast, but y’all should be used to that by now. 
> 
> Thank you to all who have read/reviewed/favorited/followed/left kudos! Also, and as always, a huge thanks to my beta, Xaraphis!

 

**Somewhere I Have Never Travelled**

**Alethnya**

　

_nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals_

_the power of your intense fragility:whose texture_

_compels me with the color of its countries,_

_rendering death and forever with each breathing_

_-ee cummings_

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

_(Four Hours Later)_

 

The first thing that occurred to Duval as she swam back to consciousness was that her head hurt. Quite badly too. Which, she supposed, wasn’t all that surprising really since the last thing she remembered was shoving Allen out a window and preparing to follow her out just as something blunt and heavy cracked her in the back of the head.

 

The butt of a rifle perhaps? Or maybe the hilt of a very large knife? Had any of the guards been carrying knives? She hadn’t seen any, though she supposed they might have been. What kind of knives would they carry? Who honestly carried knives anymore? Well, she did sometimes, but not this time. She’d had her phaser but they probably took it when they knocked her out which was just rude. The knocking out part was rude too. But the taking part was ruder...more rude?...rudest? Ruder wasn’t actually a word, was it? And did she have a concussion? She thought she might. It would explain a lot The headache. The nausea. The fuzzy thoughts. Fuzzy, fuzzy, fuzzy...like a teddy bear or a...yeah, she was pretty sure she had at least a bit of a concussion because she was pretty sure her usual internal monologue wasn’t quite such a random, rambling stream of consciousness...obviously it was some kind of stream of consciousness, but maybe not quite as...

 

“Oh for fuck’s sake, _shut up_ ,” she hissed, squeezing her eyes shut tight and trying to center herself. She focused on her breathing, deep pulls in and slow breaths out as she tried very hard to clear her muddled thoughts; to reign them in and keep them from wandering further and further afield. After a few long minutes of this, her thoughts began to sharpen up at least a little bit, details that had been totally lost on her before staggering somewhat drunkenly into soft-focus relief.

 

Primary among those newly discovered details was the fact that she was tied to a chair. Her arms were twisted hard behind her, lashed together with what felt like thin, coarse twine that was cutting into her skin something fierce. Her legs were tied as well, each ankle secured to a corresponding chair leg. Whoever had done the securing had known what they were doing - everything was properly tight extraordinarily uncomfortable.

 

Not that she wouldn’t be able to get out - because she _would_ _-_ but they certainly were doing everything they could to make it more difficult. Bastards.

 

Once she felt she’d gotten a firm enough grip on herself, Duval blinked her eyes open slowly, squinting against both the light and her raging headache. She did her best to ignore the pain and the discomfort and began trying to take stock of her surroundings. One glance was enough to recognize that they hadn’t moved her - she was still in the warehouse. In fact, she realized after a few pained looks around that she was in exactly the same place that Allen had been...likely tied to the exact same chair. She wiggled experimentally, testing that hypothesis and discovering that yes, it _was_ the same chair.

 

It was an old metal chair, rusted in spots. And, as she had noted when she’d been untying Allen from it earlier, the welds holding the back to the seat were on the verge of letting go. Handy, that. She’d be making full use of that weakness just as soon as her head was in a better state. She didn’t want to dawdle - she was _so_ ready to be back on familiar ground, back on Io, back on Khan...

 

_On Khan._ She let out a tittering giggle at the slip. Because that wasn’t right, was it? Not _on_. Not _on_ Khan. _To_. Back _to_ Khan. That was it. That’s what she’d _meant_. Though, if she was being honest, _on_ sounded pretty damn good too. But that hadn’t been...it’d just been a...a...

 

“...slip of the tongue,” she muttered, then started giggling all over again.

 

Somewhere, in the back of her mind, the rational part of her let out an enormous sigh, crossed her arms and settled in to wait until she could take back over, foot tapping impatiently. Because she was definitely going to need a bit of time before she could get herself out of this; a bit of time for her mind to clear far better than it already had. Luckily, she _had_ some time...judging by the light coming in through the windows, she’d only been out for maybe half an hour.

 

Since she hadn’t wasted any time in going after Allen once Masterson left, she should still have plenty of time until anyone of any substance could be brought in to interrogate her. She probably should have waited until the cover of darkness, but since there hadn’t been much point in attempting an overly stealthy rescue - neither of them would ever be of use working with this group again; they’d both of them effectively burned any and all of _those_ bridges to the ground - she had decided just to go all in. Especially since Masterson had been positive that Allen was being held by a handful of lower level lackeys.

 

All things considered, extraction should have been quick, painless and easy - get in, disable the guards, free Allen, get out, get off planet. And it had gone exactly according to plan...

 

Right up to the ‘get out’ part. The whole thing had sort of gone to shit at that point.

 

On the bright side, Allen _had_ gotten away, so she didn’t have to worry about her this time. Which was good, because the first time had been like pulling teeth; if she’d had to do it again, Allen might well have ended up _missing_ teeth. If the little pain in the ass hadn’t felt the need to question every single thing she’d done, they would have both made it out no problem and she wouldn’t be tied to a chair, giggling over prepositions like a horny teenager.

 

Not that she was horny. Not _currently,_ at least. Being tied up didn’t do anything for her. She’d tried it once...long, _long_ ago when she’d actually thought relationships and work could potentially co-exist. Even then, young as she was, she’d already had too much on the job experience with the real thing to find that kind of play arousing. Stimulating, yes...but entirely the wrong kind of stimulating.

 

“Really? Are you really thinking about this _now?_ ” She blew out a disgusted breath, clenching her eyes back shut again. “Think...of...something...else...”

 

While her mind, still apparently running on auto-pilot, shuffled through disjointed thought after disjointed thought, she started twisting her wrists gently back and forth, to and fro, hoping to loosen the bonds. It hurt, but she relished the pain...welcomed it even. Because the more it hurt, the easier it became to focus.

 

An hour later, she had managed to loosen the ropes just enough that they weren’t cutting into her skin anymore - never mind the fact that her wrists were a bloody mess; she could tell that without even seeing them, could feel the sticky warmth of the blood dripping down her hands and off her fingers. Best of all, she was thinking much more clearly than she had been. She still wasn’t at the top of her game, but frankly, she didn’t need to be. Not today...not for _this._

Not when she was dealing with the kind of idiots who knew they had a trained spy on their hands but didn’t even bother to send anyone up to check on her.

 

As soon as the thought ran through her head, a board creaked behind her. Not just any sort of creak either - not just the groan of an old building settling; that creak had come at the end of a heavy boot.

 

Someone was there.

 

Another creak. Another. Footsteps. Getting closer.

 

Someone was _definitely_ there.

 

Duval’s head came up, ears straining and senses on high alert, a shot of adrenaline running through her veins and doing more for her mental acuity than anything else had so far. The big question was...who was it? She doubted it was her captors. She could hear them, faintly, going about their business on a lower floor. If it were any of them, she rather suspected they would be far, _far_ louder.

 

But then, she doubted it was anyone of any particular skill either. Whoever it was, they were too loud to be a true professional. No, this more sounded like someone who thought they were being stealthy but lacked the experience to...

 

Oh.

 

Lord, give me strength.

 

She rolled her eyes to heaven and shook her head in disbelief. “You have got to be fucking _kidding_ me.”

 

Silence. The footsteps stopped, just outside of her line of sight and everything went absolutely silent. Until...

 

“Son of a _bitch_ , Duval...keep your voice down.”

 

“What are you doing here, Allen? ”

 

A beat.

 

“What do you _think_ I’m doing here?”

 

“Being an idiot?”

 

Allen stepped forward, just into Duval’s line of sight, a glare on her face. “Stuck in a life or death situation and you’re still a bitch,” she snipped, hushed but sharp.

 

“This is hardly life or death,” Duval shot back at her, returning her glare in kind. “And I’m _always_ a bitch. Accept it and move on. Now seriously...what the fuck are you doing here? I already got you out once...you should’ve just gone to the ship and _waited_.”

 

“Don’t be stupid,” Allen scoffed. “You had to know I’d come back.”

 

Duval rolled her eyes again. “Yeah...I prayed for it with every breath I took,” she drawled, shifting in her seat, angling herself so that she could see the other woman better. “And there’s that whole bitch thing again. Sorry...my head’s not a hundred percent right the moment," she paused, winced, “and I hadn’t actually planned to tell you that, but it seems that my mouth and brain are on something of a disconnect at present," she winced again. “Sweet Christ Almighty, I’m starting to annoy myself now. Get me untied so that we can get the hell out of here, would you?”

 

For a long moment, Allen just stared at her. “So is that it then? No thanks? Not even a speck of gratitude?”

 

“At this point,” Duval shook her wrists pointedly, “no. There’s a time and a place for all of that, honey, and here and now isn’t even remotely it. I’ll thank you plenty once were on our way home. For now, just get on with it.”

 

She felt Allen step up behind her, felt the touch of gloved fingers against the skin of her wrists just below her coat sleeve...but then the hands slid higher, away from the bindings and up to rest on her sleeve just above her wrist. She frowned and craned her head, trying to catch sight of Allen once more. “What are you...”

 

The distinct sound of a knife flicking open silenced her and Duval’s eyes widened at the feel of the blade pressing against her arm through layers of coat and shirt sleeve. “What the fuck are you doing, Allen?”

 

“What we have right here,” Allen whispered harshly, leaning forward toward Duval’s ear, “is a teachable moment, _Agent_.” The thin sound of leather being sliced open - just at the spot where that tiny, hidden pocket was sewn into the lining of her coat - punctuated the words. “Remember when you said that to me? That day...that was the first time I fooled you. I could see it, you know. I could tell. You never saw me coming.”

 

Duval stared straight ahead, unblinking and utterly unbelieving - this couldn’t be what it very much seemed like it was. The girl couldn’t honestly be doing what it very much looked like she was doing. And if she was...

 

“This,” she said slowly and - she thought - very reasonably, given the situation, “is a very bad idea, Allen.”

 

A black gloved hand slid into her field of view, the tiny recording device that held their entire purpose for being there held firmly between thumb and forefinger. “You underestimated me that day, Duval. All you’ve ever done is underestimate me. But I’ve always known what I was capable of; I’ve always known what I can do. And now, I’m going to make sure that no one ever underestimates me again.” She turned her hand, fist closing around the device. She leaned forward, pressed close, her mouth hovering close to Duval’s ear. “So how about it, Agent Duval? Impressed yet?”

 

Anger - so cold it _burned_ \- welled up from deep in Duval’s gut, molten and vicious. It melted away the lingering haze in her mind, leaving everything sharp and vivid. “You leave me here like this, little girl,” she said, calm and quiet and deadly, “and you’d best _pray_ I don’t make it back.”

 

The hand holding the recording vanished and suddenly the other hand - the one still holding the knife - was at Duval’s throat, the blade’s edge pressed hard against her skin. “Then I guess I’d better make sure that doesn’t happen, huh?”

 

It was a bold move; a clever move, all things considered. If this was the direction Allen was going to take, then killing her now was definitely the smart choice. But there was one problem with that...one big, huge, gaping problem. And if the light tremor of the hand holding the knife to her throat was any indication, it was a problem that Allen was only just starting to recognize.

 

_Deciding_ to kill was one thing. But actually doing it? Actually _killing_? Well...that was something else entirely. It was an enormous step to take, moving from thought to action in the purposeful and premeditated taking of a life. Lines had to be crossed. Big lines. Lines that most people would never - _could_ never - bring themselves _to_ cross.

 

It was a line that Duval had crossed early and often in her career. It hadn’t been easy and she’d promptly thrown up everything in her stomach after each of her first several kills - but she had done it.

 

That Allen was still just standing there, the knife trembling in her hand, seemed to suggest that she was having trouble stepping over that line. And if she really was struggling with the decision, then Duval knew that the best thing to do would be to push the issue; stress her and hope to trigger a flight response.

 

She needed to goad her; to piss her off. Easy enough. She’d been pissing Allen off without meaning to for weeks now. Doing it on purpose would be absolute cake.

 

“I am officially done with this," Duval snarled and, not giving herself a chance to reconsider her plan, she pressed her neck forward against the blade, biting back on a flinch as it cut ever so slightly into her skin. “You’ve talked the talk; time to walk the walk. You wanna make a name for yourself? You wanna howl with the big dogs? Well then, little girl, you’d best get a move on and fucking _do it_."

 

As far as plans went, it wasn’t stellar, but she wasn’t exactly swimming in options at present and it was the best one immediately available to her. That didn’t stop the voice of doubt - sounding, oddly enough, a bit more baritone than she remembered - from attempting to drop in its two cents, but she brushed it aside impatiently. She knew perfectly well that it was a dangerous game she was playing. But she also knew Allen far better than the younger woman suspected. She might have been taking a risk, but it wasn’t a blind one. It was a calculated one. And, frankly, she liked her odds.

 

“I’ll do it,” Allen assured. “I will do it. I’ll do it.”

 

“Listen at you, lying to yourself _,”_ she spat, feeling a thin trickle of blood begin to creep down her neck. “I can feel it, you know? I can _feel_ your hand shaking. You won’t do it. You _can’t_ do it.”

 

“I can,” Allen insisted hotly, though Duval could feel her grip on the knife loosening more and more with every second that ticked past. “I can...I can do it.”

 

She was on the edge now, that cool, calm and collected facade crumbled to so much dust at her feet. Duval could feel it and knew it was time to go for broke. All or nothing.

 

“ _Then do it_ ,” Duval roared, her voice loud and echoing in the empty space around them. “Do it, you fucking coward! Do it! _Do it_!”

 

Distantly, over the tumult in her head, Duval could hear movement from below - chairs scraping across floorboards and booted feet hurrying about. Her captors had, as intended, heard her and were no doubt on their way up to see what the commotion was. Allen’s hand at her neck was shaking even more now, the knife almost vibrating against her throat.

 

“Why did you do that?” There was real panic in Allen’s voice now. “Do you _want_ them to get hold of the intel?”

 

“You’ve got a knife to my throat,” Duval hissed. “ _Fuck_ the intel.”

 

“You can’t...I don’t...” The knife dropped then, disappearing from her neck entirely. “I don’t need to do it," Allen declared, sounding more hopeful than certain and Duval could feel her backing away, could hear the same desperate, miserable shake in the younger woman’s voice that had been in her hand. “ _They’ll_ do it. They will. They’ll kill you. I don’t need to.”

 

“Oh, you’d better hope so," Duval agreed, looking straight ahead as she heard the dueling sounds of Allen making her escape and her captors thundering up the stairs. “For your sake, honey, you had really better hope so.”

 

By the time the three armed men burst into the room, she knew that Allen was gone.

 

“What the fuck are you yelling about?”

 

Duval shifted her gaze to the one who had spoken, taking his measure in a glance; like Masterson had said - low level lackey. Ones she didn’t know from her first go round with this group, so likely new recruits to boot. It would be easy to spook him, them. Easy to send them running off after Allen. But, ever the loyal Agent, she knew she wouldn’t do that, no matter how much the other woman deserved it. Allen had the intel and despite what she’d said earlier the intel needed to get back to Io. Period.

 

So she ducked her chin to hide the cut on her neck and dug deep into her repertoire and pulled out one of her greatest weapons - wide-eyed innocence. “I’m...I’m _so_ sorry...really...it’s just, there was...there was a...a _rat_ or something. I don’t know...it was just...oh, it was _so_ gross and it just...it scared me and I panicked. I won’t...it won’t happen again. I swear. I do.” She looked up at the man who appeared to be ‘in charge’, eyes widening even further and lower lip trembling. “Please...please don’t...hurt me. Please don’t hurt me. I’ll behave, I’ll be quiet...so quiet. I promise. I do...I promise...please...”

 

It never failed to amaze her how well that particular ruse worked. She could see it, as the perfectly collected parts of her brain stared out from behind the pale, teary mask she’d put on. She could see how all three of the rather large lads with their rather large guns just... _folded_...before the apparent force of her doe-eyed onslaught. There were, she had long ago discovered, advantages to being small and female - no one ever suspected that a woman, especially such a little one, could be capable of such big things. It appeared these three would be no different from the other idiots who’d made that frankly infuriating assumption over the years.

 

And two hours later, they paid for their mistake...

 

_Limp limbs. Blankly staring eyes. A broken length of rusted metal from the broken chair protruded from the eye socket of the biggest idiot, the one who’d decided that the poor, pathetic little female prisoner was too good an opportunity to pass up. An unwound length of blood-stained twine still clung to the neck of the one who’d taken such effusive offense to seeing his friend impaled, who she’d tried to kill quietly to maybe prevent the last one from hearing. The third, on his back, shirt and skin singed from the killing blast of the phaser she’d recovered from the second man; he’d gone for his own weapon and left her no choice, which was just as well really._

 

...they paid for it dearly.

 

* * *

 

 

It was still daylight when Duval slipped out of the warehouse. Not ideal, but unavoidable since she wasn’t about to sit around and wait for the cover of darkness to fall. She’d done her best to mitigate anything that might draw attention, having taken a few minutes to clean the blood from her face and hands in the rudimentary bathroom on the main floor. Her clothes had been another challenge. Stiff with dried blood in spots - she hadn’t realized how much her head had _bled_ \- and wet with fresh blood in others, she’d looked like a walking autopsy. The simplest solution was to cover up the gore, so she’d yanked the hooded overcoat off of the last man she’d killed - it had escaped unscathed, save for a tiny burn mark on the right hand lapel - and tossed it on over top of her bloody clothes, tugging the hood on for good measure. It was much too large and far from stylish, but it shielded her from prying eyes and that was all she was concerned about at present.

 

She picked her way carefully through the afternoon bustle, keeping to side roads and back alleys as much as possible as she made her way toward the spaceport on the far edge of town. It was a long shot. She fully expected Allen and their ship to be long gone by then, but she had to at least check.

 

Being proved right by the very empty hangar space that had housed their small ship only hours before wasn’t a particular comfort. In fact, it was actually a giant pain in the ass. Before heading off to save Allen, she had cleared out their room and stowed all their gear - her cache of emergency funds included - aboard the ship in anticipation of a hasty departure. So with the ship gone, she found herself with no money and nothing of any particular trade value, which was going to make alternate travel arrangements difficult to come by. Luckily, she had one last ace up her sleeve.

 

Masterson.

 

Duval was fairly confident that she could finagle a ride out of him - she knew for a fact that he had his own ship, a small, non-descript little trader vessel. She also knew, after sneaking a peek at the logs while the clerk was in the bathroom, that he was still on-planet; his ship, according to record, parked three hangars over and not scheduled to depart for another two days.

 

He might laugh in her face when she asked, but the fact was, he was the best option available to her at present. Now, she just needed to find him.

 

Thankfully, luck was on her side for the first time in what felt like forever and she found him in only the third watering hole she wandered into, parked at the bar and sucking down beers like an old pro. Easing herself up onto the stool beside him, she stared straight ahead and ordered a drink, grinning a little at the way he stiffened at the sound of her voice. She could feel his eyes on her as she accepted the mug from the bartender - _draft_ beer, an unexpected treat -and took several long, large gulps.

 

It wasn’t a quiet bar, not like the last one they’d met in. In fact, it was downright _busy_ , people coming and going right and left and the dull roar of conversation and laughter filling up all the potential silences. Just as well, really; much harder to be overheard in the din. Duval leaned slightly toward him, her beer in hand and her hood still up. “Need your help.”

 

Masterson took a sip of his own beer, appearing entirely unconcerned. “The fuck’re you thinking? Not here. Not now.”

 

Ok, so only outwardly unconcerned. Which changed nothing. “Understood and agreed. Hangar 127 at the spaceport is empty. Half an hour." She stopped, steeled her determination. “Please.”

 

“I can’t...”

 

“ _Please_ ,” she reiterated, putting as much desperation as she could in her voice _-_ things might not have been as bad as all that, but a little sympathy often went a long, long way.

 

It certainly earned her a sharp, assessing look from those hardened eyes of his and, after a moment, an even sharper nod. “Fine. Half an hour.”

 

“Thank you,” she breathed, downing the rest of the beer in one swift go. She waited until the bartender looked away and then slipped off the stool and into the crowd, ducking quickly and quietly out of the bar without feeling even a little bit guilty about her modified dine-and-dash. After everything else that had happened that day, she refused to feel bad about an unpaid bar tab.

 

It was all surprisingly simple after that. Masterson turned up thirty minutes later, just as promised. Once she explained the situation to him - or at least, a highly edited _version_ of the situation, minus the full details of the betrayal and abandonment and only vaguely skimming over the triple homicide - he didn’t just offer to give her a ride to more welcoming territory, he insisted on it. The only catch was that his own business necessitated a bit of a delay in their departure. She wasn’t thrilled about having to wait, wanting to be back on Io something _fierce_ , but she wasn’t about to argue. The man was doing her a favor, the last thing she wanted to do was piss him off. So she agreed to lay low for the next day and a half while he did whatever it was he needed to do - she didn’t ask, he didn’t offer and they were both perfectly fine with that.

 

Once the few details they required were ironed out, Duval slipped out into comforting anonymity of the early evening crowds with absolutely no idea of where to go and absolutely no way to get a room for the night. She deliberately hadn’t asked Masterson for any help on that score, having no desire to add any more IOU’s to her ledger - not to mention, the idea was to stay well below any possible notice and the best way to do that was to stay entirely off the grid. So for the next thirty-six hours, she lost herself in the shadowy recesses of the city, snatching a few hours of sleep where she could and avoiding notice as much as humanly possible. The only risk she did take was to slip into a shop and pocket a few lengths of bandage and a tube of antiseptic salve to patch up her wrists and throat - laying low was all well and good, but she wasn’t about to risk infection. For the duration, she kept an ear to the ground, alert for any evidence that her actions at the warehouse had spurred a search. If they had, she neither saw nor heard any sign of it, which was fine by her. She already had more than enough shit to shovel through as it was.

 

She was all kinds of miserable; physically, emotionally...all of it. Fury licked at her insides; a molten, boiling pool that was teetering on the verge of full on eruption and it was taking energy that she didn’t have to keep it contained. On top of that, she was exhausted and hungry and her head was pounding with the mother of all migraines and she was just _done_. Just...absolutely and completely done with every thing about this all out _bitch_ of an assignment. She wanted a very hot shower followed by a very large meal and then topped off with a very long nap.

 

If there were other things she wanted as well, she didn’t let herself dwell on them. No point dreaming about things that may or may not come true, no matter how _possible_ things had seemed before she left. For all she knew, the time apart could very well have proven just how big a part proximity _had_ played in that scene before she left. She’d done her best not to think of it at all, to erect at least a few temporary barriers...just in case.

 

But as she shivered and ached and waited for the hours to crawl past, she came to a decision. Self-preservation would always be her default setting; she was too set in her ways to do anything about that now. It didn’t follow, however, that it needed to be her _only_ setting.

 

If, when she got back, all those delightful _options_ were still available to her, she was going to do her level best to... _avail_ herself of them.

 

Vigorously.

 

* * *

 

 

Two days and a delightfully uneventful trip later, they arrived at their agreed upon destination - the civilian side of Mars Colony 3. Busy enough that Masterson could slip in and out without drawing any attention to himself and manned with a few strategically placed and entirely unofficial Section operatives who could help Duval with the next - _last_ \- leg of her trip.

 

True to form, they exchanged as little as possible, despite the fact that both were well aware that this was likely to be the last interaction they ever had. Just before disembarking, she offered him a smile and a handshake. He accepted it with a gruff nod and the faintest twitch of his lips. Neither of them said a word, but then, they didn’t need to. They weren’t friends or colleagues or even acquaintances. They had been profitable associates for a time, but now...as Duval hopped down the steps of his ship and walked away, not bothering to look back...now they weren’t anything at all.

 

And she didn’t even think twice about it, picking her way through the bustle and into the section of the Colony where the group that emphatically was _not_ Section 31 operated. Tapping her personal security code into the keypad just outside the door that was labeled _Utilities Management_ , she stepped through the door and into far more familiar environs. The Agents currently on staff were, thankfully, familiar to her, which made the whole process just that much more painless.

 

Within an hour, she’d eaten a quick meal, sucked down a cup of truly terrible coffee and freshened up a bit - though not as much as she would have liked; they hadn’t had any clothes at hand in her size, so she was stuck with what she had on. The female of the group had offered to trek out into the colony proper and see what she could scrounge up, but Duval had declined. She’d been delayed long enough...and she was so _close_ now.

 

In line with her very vocal desire to be on her way as quickly as possible, she was soon after shown to a small shuttle that would serve as her transport back to Io.

 

Apparently, it belonged there anyway and they’d just been putting off returning it because none of them particularly cared for Io.

 

Apparently, she was doing them a favor. Cue over-loud laughter and too-wide smiles as they stared at her expectantly, waiting for her to join in their mirth.

 

Apparently, they weren’t as familiar with _her_ as she was with them.

 

She shut the shuttle door in their faces and made a beeline for the pilots seat. They had barely gotten the hangar doors open before she blew through them, her course, in every way that mattered, firmly and irrevocably set on Io.

 

* * *

 

 

_“Incoming shuttle - identify your origin, crew and purpose.”_

 

Duval couldn’t keep the grin off her face, the voice of Io’s Chief Security Officer had never sounded sweeter to her ears. “Shuttle provided to field operative by Mars 3 contingent. Current crew compliment of one,” she responded, slowing her approach rather than halting it entirely, her clearance a given. “Pilot and sole occupant, Agent Rebecca Duval - security clearance code 3982103D - requesting permission to land.” Her smile widened stupidly. “And you’re well aware of my purpose Stevens, so just let me in already...it’s been a hell of a trip.”

 

There was a long moment of silence after that; so long that her smile faltered.

 

“Stevens...”

 

“Permission to land granted. Proceed to shuttle bay 12.”

 

Eyes narrowing, Duval did as ordered, aiming the shuttle toward bay 12, but her faint sense of unease grew. When she set down in 12 and the shuttle was immediately surrounded by a large detail of heavily armed security personnel, the feeling in the pit of her stomach was beyond unease...and there was nothing at all _faint_ about it. Unlatching her belts, she rolled out of the pilots seat and headed straight for the door, smacking the button to activate it far harder than necessary.

 

As soon as the door slid open, she started down the steps, her arms out in front of her and her movements slow and deliberate in anticipation of having a lot of very powerful weapons trained on her. “I am armed,” she declared loudly. “My phaser is holstered at my left hip, beneath both coats. Should I remove it or should I hold fast?”

 

“Hold fast,” came the immediate response from Security Chief Stevens himself. “I’ll retrieve the weapon.”

 

Duval turned her head slowly to watch him approach, a deep frown on her face. When he was beside her with his hands under her coat and seeking her weapon, she sought his eyes. “What the _fuck_ is going on? Why am I...”

 

“Can’t answer you,” he replied stiffly, though she could see the regret in his face. “You’re to follow me, Agent Duval. Commander Vazquez and Admiral Marcus are en route. They’d like to speak to you alone.”

 

She nodded, jaw set so tightly that it hurt. She kept her hands well visible and followed after Stevens, her heart in her throat and her stomach in absolute knots. What had happened while she she was gone that _this_ was her greeting?

 

Her mind immediately flew to Khan. Had something happened with him? Had something gone wrong? Had he...

 

“Is Commander Harrison still in residence?”

 

The question flew from her lips before she’d even realized the words were on her tongue. Stevens, walking ahead of her, turned to shoot her a look. “You’ve got an entire squad of guns pointed at you and you’re worried about Commander Harrison?” He huffed out a laugh and shook his head. “I guess some rumors can be believed.”

 

She completely ignored the snark, not caring even a little bit about it at that moment. “So he’s fine then,” she insisted as they walked into an empty cargo hold just off the shuttle bay. “He’s not...nothing’s happened to him? He hasn’t...”

 

“Commander Harrison has nothing to do with this,” Stevens said after a moment, an annoyingly knowing look on his face. “This is all about you, Duval.”

 

Breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding rushed out of her and she sagged a bit, almost dizzy with relief. “Oh, good,” she sighed, bringing a hand up to scrub over her face. “That’s...that’s ok then.”

 

Stevens was looking at her like she was insane. He opened his mouth to say something else but never got around to it because at that moment, Alexander Marcus blew into the room, expression thunderous and step hurried. He marched straight up to Duval, brushing Stevens aside and staring hard into her eyes.

 

“Duval.”

 

He said her name like he’d never heard it before. It made her all kinds of uncomfortable. “Yes, Duval,” she agreed. “Excuse the impertinence, sir, but what the _fuck_ is going on?”

 

And that was exactly the moment that Vazquez charged into the room, breath coming in great heaving gasps and eyes wide and wild as they fell on her. He staggered forward another few steps, then stopped, his gaze bouncing all over her face. “Becca,” he rasped, voice thin and reedy. “Becca...you’re alive!”

 

Duval drew back like she’d been slapped, blinking hard. “I’m sorry, what? I’m _alive_? That’s a _surprise_?”

 

Marcus, cursing up a blue streak under his breath, whirled on Vazquez. “Shut your mouth and shut it now or I’ll bust you back to Ensign and ship you off to a deep space station.” He turned back to Duval. “Not how I’d have liked to start this, but honestly, I’m not sure there was a _good_ way.”

 

While he was talking, ideas had been forming, certainties crystallizing, and by the time he had finished, that molten pit of rage that had been so close to eruption on Archanis was bubbling and roiling once more. Fists clenching and unclenching at her sides, Duval took a long, deep breath through her nose and blew it out, slowly, past her lips. “I assume then, sir, that _Agent Allen_ has returned from our assignment.”

 

“Yesterday morning,” Marcus acknowledged and there was anger in his voice as well. “According to her...”

 

“I died on Archanis,” Duval cut in, finishing the sentence for him and practically spitting the words. “Yeah...I figured as much. She was rather hopeful on that score the last time I spoke to her.”

 

“Becca,” Vazquez, ignoring the warning look from Marcus, took a step forward, drawing her attention, “you’re not...you’re not suggesting that Agent Allen...”

 

“I’m not suggesting anything,” she snarled, some of her fury boiling over. “Especially not to _you_.”

 

“Reign it in, Duval,” Marcus said, deadly calm. He put a staying hand on her arm, gripping her elbow lightly. “Ignore him and talk to _me_. What the hell happened out there?”

 

Duval forced herself to look away from Vazquez and focus on the Admiral instead. Taking another deep breath, she calmed herself enough to have the conversation that Marcus was trying to have. Or at least, as much of it as she felt capable of at the moment. “It’s a long story, sir, and I’m not even remotely in the right frame of mind to discuss it at present. The past three days have been...trying. Very, _very_ trying.”

 

“I don’t doubt it,” Marcus said, still maintaining that very deliberate calm. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I need to know what happened...”

 

“And I will happily give you a full rundown of every single, solitary detail, sir,” Duval cut in, patience waning and control hanging by a thread. “But not this second. I need...I need some time, sir.”

 

Marcus dropped his hand from her arm, frowning now, looking almost concerned. It wasn’t a comfortable fit for his face, but it was undeniably there. “Do you need medical?”

 

Probably, but she wasn’t about to admit that. There would be time enough later...after she...well...just _after_. “No, sir. I’m fine. What I need, more than anything else right now, is a shower, a change of clothes and my bed. Once I’ve had my fill of all those things, I can assure you that I’ll be in your office, ready to talk.”

 

“I don’t like it,” Marcus said after a moment of consideration, “but I’ll allow it. This time.”

 

“Thank you, sir.” She was almost vibrating with anger now and it was taking every ounce of skill she had to keep it hidden. Appearing in full control of herself was paramount; she didn’t want an escort. She couldn’t have an escort...not for what she planned to do as soon as the Admiral dismissed her. “I do have one - just one - question that I need answered though.”

 

“Ask.”

 

“Did you receive the intel? It was...taken off my hands and I just wanted to be sure it got where it needed to go.”

 

She could see the way the Admiral’s jaw tensed and found herself oddly pleased that he was feeling at least a little bit what she was wrestling with herself. “Agent Allen delivered the information when she arrived, yes. I take it she was _not_ the one to gather it as she claimed?”

 

Duval shot him a look, her silence more eloquent than any words could have been.

 

“Right,” Marcus barked, short and sharp and entirely annoyed. “Get the hell out of here, Lieutenant. I want you well rested and on your game when we discuss this tomorrow.”

 

Finally.

 

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.” She offered him a quick salute, odd for her but strangely appropriate for the moment. She took off past him, head held high and sights set on the door that led out into the corridor, her brain already working a mile a minute on her next stop.

 

“Becca...”

 

Vazquez’s voice pulled her out of her thoughts but she didn’t stop, just held up a hand, palm out, rebuffing his words. Rebuffing _him_. “Not a word,” she snapped. “Not from you. Not on _this_.”

 

She blew past him and past the security detail, mind consumed with everything that had happened over the past several days. Not two steps into the corridor though, another thought broke through. A different thought, screamed loudly from the part of her that she had put to heel the second that Allen’s full treachery had been revealed. She didn’t want to think about anything but Allen just then...but that thought...it was enough to stop her in her tracks.

 

Spinning around and bracing herself on the doorframe, she looked directly to Marcus, ignoring every other person in the room. “Commander Harrison...”

 

She didn’t say any more than that. Couldn’t bring herself to say any more than that. But it was enough, Marcus’ lips thinned into a tellingly grim line.

 

“Commander Harrison was informed of your status yesterday afternoon.”

 

He didn’t need to say that it hadn’t gone over well; his expression told the tale clear enough. And in that moment, all that hot anger just...imploded. Turned inward. Spiralled down, down, down into the coldest, hardest parts of her heart. Changed...transformed...into a vicious, icy rage like nothing she had ever felt before.

 

Duval lifted her chin, gave a nod and then turned back around and continued on her way. She knew that she passed people as she went, could hear the surprised exclamations, the shocked gasps, but she ignored all of it.

 

“Agent Allen,” she asked every single body she passed, never even noticing their faces or caring who they were, except for the fact that they weren’t who she was looking for. “Where is Agent Allen?”

 

No one knew. No one had seen her. They asked other questions which she summarily ignored, just continued to stalk down one corridor after another until she reached the heart of the station. Coming into the main corridor, she absently stripped off the heavy trench that she’d hidden beneath since slipping out of that warehouse three days prior, dropping it in the middle of the walkway and barely even noticing that she had.

 

She walked into the mess, eyes searching every face and dismissing them all in turn and still ignoring the absolute hell out of everything else going on around her. Not there. Time to move on.

 

The gym...not there either.

 

And then, she walked into the Officer’s Lounge - slightly misnamed for Io’s purposes; anyone in the Section was allowed in - and there she was.

 

At a table on the far side of the room, alone and just...sitting there.

 

Duval’s steps slowed, turned more fluid, a swagger rather than a gallop now. She could feel her lips pull back in something like a smile, though she could only imagine what it actually looked like. If the people scurrying to get out of her way were any indication, it wasn’t a pretty expression. Of course, the fact that she was a right mess and wearing a coat stiff with dried blood was cause enough for alarm, but she was fairly certain that it was the aura of imminent danger that really sent them running.

 

Unfortunately for the woman it was actually aimed at, she was too wrapped up in her own thoughts to notice the threat swooping down upon her until it was too late.

 

“Is this seat taken?”

 

She was distantly proud of how _calm_ she sounded. But it was the way Allen’s head snapped up and the look of wide-eyed _horror_ that contorted her face that left her really glowing inside. Or would have, if she weren’t quite so consumed with murderous enmity.

 

“I’ll take that as a _no_ ,” she drawled before sliding sinuously into the seat across from Allen, forearms resting on the table, hands crossing demurely atop one another. “So...how’ve you been? How was your trip back?”

 

“You...” Allen nearly choked on the word; almost couldn’t get it out at all. “Your...”

 

“ _My_ trip back was just fine, by the way. Quiet...uneventful. Of course, there’s that whole thing where I’m apparently _dead_.” Her smile turned feral and utterly, utterly dangerous. “But I don’t suppose I should be too surprised about that, all things considered.”

 

Allen, panicking, smacked her palm down on the table and moved to push herself to her feet, clearly desperate to escape. Duval, without missing a beat, shot her hand out, grabbing the other woman’s wrist tight and yanking her forward sharply, dragging her half-way onto the table and drawing a strangled yelp form Allen.

 

“It’s rude to walk away in the middle of a conversation,” she said, voice glacial and expression deadly. “And we are _far_ from finished here.” Duval scooted all the way forward in her seat, eyes never breaking contact with Allen’s. Beneath the table, she stuck her leg out, hooking a booted toe under the seat of Allen’s empty chair. She jerked it forward, hard, the leading edge slamming into the back of Allen’s knees and sending her toppling backwards into the seat with another pained cry. “Now sit the fuck down.”

 

Shuffled steps approached and Duval watched as Allen’s eyes darted over her shoulder, desperate and beseeching. Pleading for help from whatever idiot had decided to step in.

 

“Whoever you are, go away immediately,” Duval said without turning to look.

 

“This is...you can’t do this here, Agent Duval.” The bartender - she’d never bothered to learn his name - sounded nervous but determined. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave or I’ll...”

 

Duval rolled her head around languidly to look at him, brow arched and expression wholly unimpressed. “Or you’ll what?”

 

The bartender gulped. “I’ll call security.”

 

She snorted. “Right. You do that.”

 

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught movement...quick, purposeful movement. Whipping her head around just in time to see Allen, who had used the momentary distraction to her advantage, flick open her knife. With a wild cry, the younger woman dove for her across the table, reckless in her desperation.

 

Duval shot to her feet so fast that her chair tipped over backwards behind her. She sidestepped the slashing jab of the blade and caught Allen’s wrist in an even tighter grip than before, spinning under the blade and wrenching the arm that held it viciously. In one fluid move, she slipped behind Allen, twisted her arm up behind her back and snatched the knife from her. Twirling it into a more comfortable grip in her palm, she snapped it up to press hard to the younger woman’s neck.

 

“Now _this_ isa familiar scene, isn’t it?” She torqued Allen’s wrist hard, earning yet another pained whine. “You couldn’t play it out to the end.” She let the blade slip just enough to slice into the delicate skin beneath. “But you can bet your traitorous little ass that _I_ can.”

 

“Please,” Allen croaked and Duval could hear the fear in her voice - hear it and _relish_ it. “Please don’t...”

 

Duval leaned forward, pressing close. “I warned you,” she said, low and deadly. “I told you to _pray_ that I didn’t make it back. But you do have a bad habit of not...” she adjusted the knife, bringing the point up to rest just below the line of Allen’s jaw, right over her jugular vein, “...listening.”

 

“Becca!”

 

Of all the things she didn’t want to hear at that moment, Vazquez’s voice was right at the top of the list.

 

“I’m a bit busy right now, _Commander_. If you could hold on just a few minutes...”

 

“Let her go, Becca. You know you can’t do this.”

 

She turned her head just enough to catch sight of him - and the same armed security detail from the shuttle bay that flanked him. Not that she cared. Not that they would stop her. “Actually, I was just telling Agent Allen here how very much I _can_ do this.”

 

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” another voice rang out. Marcus this time. “Duval...let her go.”

 

This was just getting annoying now. “I’d really rather not, sir.”

 

“I don’t doubt it,” Marcus snapped, pushing past the guards and Vazquez but still stopping a healthy distance from them. “But do it anyway.”

 

“Admiral...”

 

“That’s an _order_ , Lieutenant.” He took another step toward her, voice quiet and infinitely reasonable. “We’ve only just gotten you back. I’d hate to have to lose you all over again...especially over something so stupid.”

 

Duval bristled at that. “Stupid? She tried to _kill_ me, sir. Then she left me to _die,_ ” a burst of hot anger burned up through the icy rage, flaring bright in her eyes, “and came back here and tried to take credit for _my_ work. Explain to me what part of that situation is _stupid_ , sir?”

 

“The situation isn’t stupid,” Marcus placated. “ _She_ is. She’s _done,_ Duval. Finished. I don’t stand for this kind of shit under my command and you know it. Is it really worth throwing away your career over someone who matters that little?”

 

He was right. Duval knew he was right, but it didn’t change how badly she wanted to _hurt_ the woman who trembled in her grip with gratifying terror. Sucking in a deep breath that she then blew out in a huff, she shot the Admiral a narrow-eyed look. “I’m not going to have to sit through some bullshit anger management training seminar for this am I? Because if I am, all bets are off.”

 

Marcus cracked a grin, recognizing that the worst possible outcome had been successfully diverted. “Tell you what, Duval...you drop the knife and I’ll be happy to waive that requirement just this once.”

 

“Deal,” Duval said, lowering the knife and releasing Allen’s arm. The younger woman immediately dropped to her knees, sobbing and shaking. Duval flicked the knife shut and tucked it away in her pocket, claiming it as hers. Then, without missing a beat, she turned and slammed her knee straight into Allen’s face, feeling the satisfying crack of her nose breaking and sending her sprawling onto her back, unconscious. “So I’m all good then. How 'bout everyone else?”

 

Marcus just shook his head. “You’re a pain in my ass, Duval.” He turned and headed for the door, waving his arm behind him. “Clean this up, Vazquez. I’ll be in my quarters.”

 

Once he was gone, Duval brushed her hands on her coat and then clapped them. “Right, so...you heard the Admiral, Commander. I’ll leave you to it.” She stepped over Allen’s legs and sauntered across the room, stopping just beside Vazquez. She looked up at him, her eyes hardening once more. “Your _girlfriend_ looks like she could use a little help.”

 

Vazquez’s eyes widened. “How do...”

 

She didn’t wait around to hear what he had to say, just started walking again and she didn’t stop until she was standing in front of the door to her - _their_ \- quarters. Lingering there, just outside the door, she could feel all that anger she’d been carrying around for the past several days just...dissipate. In its place, a whole host of other, far less easily digested emotions swam to the surface.

 

The fact of the matter was that she had absolutely no idea what was waiting for her on the other side of that door. And she _hated_ not knowing things.

 

How would he react when he saw her? What would he say? What would _she_ say?

 

What _should_ she say?

 

She didn’t even know if he was actually in there. He could just as easily have holed himself up in the lab.

 

After a long moment spent chewing her lip nervously and mulling over her options, Duval ultimately came to one simple conclusion. She really didn’t have any options. There was only one thing she could do...only one thing she _wanted_ to do...

 

So she stepped forward, activated the door and stepped inside.

 

　

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know. I _know_. If I promise to have the next chapter up within a week, would it make y’all hate me less?


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised y’all a chapter in less than a week, and look at this...I actually managed to deliver! Go me! And this chapter? Consider it an apology for last week’s cliff hanger. 
> 
> Thank you to all who have read/reviewed/favorited/followed/left kudos! Also, and as always, a huge thanks to my beta, Xaraphis!

 

 

He wasn’t there - that much was immediately obvious from the dull, empty stillness of the air that she stepped into. 

 

The lights were low, dimmer than they should have been given the time glowing out at her from the display on the wall.  Apparently, he had finally gotten around to actually hacking the ambient lighting system rather than just threatening to do so.  She still suspected that his dislike for the presets had nothing to do with the lights themselves and everything to do with the fact that they had been programmed to Marcus’ specifications.  He tended to disapprove of anything even tangentially related to Marcus on principal alone.

 

She, of course, being the exception.

 

Or at least, she had been two weeks prior.  She hoped she might still be now.

 

“But I’m not thinking about that right now,” she decided, voicing the words with a stiff determination that she didn’t really feel.  “Right now," her eyes fell upon the bathroom door at the far end of the room covetously, “i’m taking a shower.” 

 

She lifted one foot and yanked her boot off, dropping it where she stood just inside the door.  It landed with a muted thump before falling on its side and was joined a moment later by its twin.  Duval padded away from them, fingers already tripping down the front of her coat as she crossed into the lounge.  She paused beside the chairs - beside _her_ chair; the one she’d sat in so many times while watching him tinker with one project or another - and slid the ruined garment down first one arm and then the other, the leather, once supple and lustrous, now stiff and cracked beneath her fingers.

 

Once upon a time, she’d treasured that coat.  Now, she didn’t even glance down at it before letting it drop to the floor in a heap.  Leaving it behind, she activated the door and breezed into the bathroom.  The door hadn’t even hissed shut behind her before she started tearing off clothes - clothes that she was only just realizing that she had been wearing for the better part of a week now.  She resolutely avoided glancing in the mirror as she stripped, knowing that she would cringe at what she saw looking back. 

 

As soon as the clothes were off, she activated the shower, setting the water to just shy of scalding.  She let it run as she unwound the bandages from her wrists - the cleanest thing on her body, since she’d changed them before heading out from Mars 3.  Dropping the soiled lengths of gauze into the bin beside the sink, she held her arms out, examining the scabbed over mess that the thin twine had made of her wrists.  It wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t infected, so she figured she had that to be thankful for at least.

 

Last, she reached up and hooked a finger under the tie in her hair - also procured on Mars 3 - and tugged at it gingerly, wincing as it pulled at the half-healed wound on the back of her head on its way out.  She let it fall on top of the pile that would be going, part and parcel, into an incinerator once she was done.  She shook her head, matted brown hair falling around her shoulders.  Fingering a lock of it, she pulled it around in front of her eyes, nose scrunching at both the smell and the texture of it.

 

“Christ Almighty,” she grumbled, before flicking the greasy tress away again, “I’m a fucking _mess_.”

 

With that said, she wasted no more time, hopping eagerly into the waiting shower.  As soon as the steaming water hit her skin, Duval groaned loudly and unabashedly, propping herself against the wall in front of her with one hand and letting herself relax for the first time in days.  At first and for much longer than she normally would have, she just stood there beneath the spray, chin dropped to her chest as she let the water sluice down her body, washing away days and days worth of blood, sweat and grime.

 

When the beat of the water was no longer enough, she grabbed soap and a cloth and set to work.  From there, she fell into her usual routine - scrub, shampoo, rinse, condition, rinse, shave, rinse.  It felt good, normal.  The mindless repetition was a comfort and she was able to turn her brain off completely for a few minutes and focus on the simple, commonplace pleasure of a good, long shower.

 

But as with all good things, it couldn’t last.  Eventually, every part of her body that could be cleaned had been cleaned.  Everywhere she could see, her skin glowed bright pink from a combination of heat and friction and she knew that it was time to get out and face all the things that she’d been able to temporarily escape from under the heat of the spray.  She turned off the water and stepped out, the cold from the floor sending a shiver up her spine.

 

It was only as she reached up onto the shelf overhead to grab a clean towel that she finally allowed herself to look in the mirror.  Aside from the obvious wounds to her neck and wrists, there was a smattering of bruises, scratches and scrapes peppering her front, back and sides.  But the bruises were neither deep nor dark, the scratches and scrapes only surface wounds - none of them cause for any particular concern.  All in all, not as bad as she’d feared, she thought as she set about drying herself, rubbing at her hair carefully.

 

Once she was no longer dripping, she wrapped the towel around her, tucking the trailing end in on itself beneath her right arm, securing it tightly.  That done, she leaned forward towards the mirror, head tilting up as she examined the half-healed cut across her neck.  It had been deeper than she’d thought; longer too.  It looked like that bitch had managed to leave her with a permanent reminder of their little adventure on Archanis.

 

Hopefully, her own contributions in that direction would have similarly long-lasting effects. 

 

“So much for no scars,” she mumbled, running her index finger along the length of it.  The movement drew her eyes to her damaged wrist and she huffed, annoyed.  “Oh well...it was good while it lasted, I guess.”

 

She quickly carded her fingers through her hair - gently through the back - to work out any knots or snags that remained.  Not perfect, but her hairbrush had been in her bag, which had been on the ship...and which, now she thought of it, was likely somewhere on the station.  Turning away from the sink, she started toward the door, which hissed open ahead of her.

 

There were things in her bag that she would rather not lose, so she was definitely going to have to...

 

Duval froze mid-thought...mid-movement...mid-breath...

 

The air was thick now; heavy.  It vibrated with an energy that was familiar, but so much more intense than she had ever felt before. 

 

She turned her head.

 

And there he was.

 

Khan sat on the sofa, head down and back bowed, not a trace of his enviably magnific posture anywhere to be seen.  His face was hidden but she could still see the tension in him; could read it in the taut line of his shoulders and the coiled tension that showed in the cords of his neck.  The creak of leather caught her ear and she dropped her eyes, taking in the elbows that rested on his knees, the rigid lines of his forearms and the way his long, elegant fingers curled tightly...desperately...into the blood-stained ruin of her discarded coat.

 

Duval couldn’t look away, her gaze riveted to the press and flex of his hands.  She swallowed hard, mouth gone suddenly and distressingly dry.  Wanting to say something, to do something, but having no idea where to begin, she just stood there and stared at him, her own hands clutching at the towel she wore in sympathetic concurrence.

 

How long they stayed that way, she had no idea.  It could have been minutes, it could have been hours;  she didn’t notice...couldn’t tell...didn’t care.  Not when he looked like _that_ and not when she felt like _this_.  All she knew was that every second that ticked past felt like an eon, every minute an eternity all its own.

 

At long last, it was he who broke the silence, inhaling swift and sharp before releasing the breath on a long, ragged exhale.

 

“There is blood on this,” he said roughly, the rich velvet of his voice gone jagged.  His fingers constricted rhythmically, in and out; the leather in his grasp groaning and creaking with each clench of his fists.

 

Duval swallowed hard, her eyes riveted to him, hating herself for not being _better_ at this. 

 

Because she wasn’t good at this.  Not at all...not even remotely.  This sort of raw, ragged emotion was a foreign language to her...one she’d never been exposed to...one she’d never had any desire to learn.  But looking at him now, seeing him like this...

 

She _ached_ to be able to fix it.  To make it better.  To be better.

 

For him.

 

One hand uncurled from its white-knuckled grip on her towel and shot out, gripping tight to the back of the chair in front of her for support, relishing its steadiness beneath her palm.  “It’s not all mine,” she said, voice strained and the words tumbling all over one another as she did her best to sound consoling, but doubting that she had succeeded even a little bit. 

 

At the sound of her voice, Khan went utterly... _utterly_...still.  “Not... _all_...yours.”

 

Dear _God_ , the sound of his voice...

 

So rough.  So desperate.  And it was _killing_ her.

 

“No,” she said, releasing her grip on the chair and skirting around it, wanting to be closer to him.  She stopped at the edge of the knee-high coffee table, any shyness over her state of undress forgotten in her rush to reassure him.  “I’m fine.  Honestly fine.  So don’t...you shouldn’t worry about it.  The blood, I mean.  It was just...it wasn’t anything...I mean, I know what you were told, but it’s not true,” she winced, biting down hard on the babble of words that just kept coming, furious with herself for making such a mess of things.  How did people even _do_ this?  How did they comfort one another without ending up sounding like a complete and total idiot?  “ _Obviously_ it’s not true and I’m...i’m...”

 

His head snapped up, shatteringly blue eyes slamming into hers like a battering ram, stealing the breath from her lungs and the words from her lips, thankfully - _finally_ \- shutting her up. 

 

“You are not dead.” 

 

Each word was an agony, a racked, bleeding wound, spoken in a low, choked voice so thick with emotion that it struck her, hard, in the center of her chest.  Tears burned her eyes, welled up, blurring her vision...but for once, she didn’t blink them away.  Refused to, really.  These tears...she wasn’t even a little bit ashamed of _these_ tears.  “No,” she said, voice thin and sad.  Her eyes locked with his, showing him the feelings that she knew she’d never be able to communicate with words as she shook her head slowly.  “I’m not dead.”  

 

Her coat slipped to the floor, forgotten entirely as he shot to his feet and stepped to the opposite edge of the table, its narrow width the only thing separating them now.  His eyes, blazing and brilliant, _devoured_ her, tracing over every line and curve of her, the weight of his perusal an almost tangible touch upon her skin.  Indeed, she swore she could feel it; the burn and tingle of it sending shivers down her spine and along every single nerve ending.

 

She let him look.  Let him see everything, every single bit of her.  Her hands itched at her sides, wanting very much to clutch at the towel, hold it tight to her in a bid to preserve at least a little bit of modesty, but she resisted the urge and willed them to stay at her sides.  She knew that even that little bit of movement, if she allowed it, could lead to more, and moving was not at all high on her priority list at present. 

 

After everything that had happened...everything they had been through, both together and apart...she couldn’t bring herself to pull back from him now.  Wouldn’t dream of allowing herself the frantic retreat that a very vocal part of her was crying for most passionately.  She was a wreck of nerves, scared to death and running on pure adrenaline, but it didn’t matter.  None of it mattered.

 

She wasn’t going anywhere.

 

Not now.  Not any time soon.

 

She watched in silence as he finished his examination, as his eyes settled heavily upon the line across her throat.  He recognized it for what it was, she could see that immediately, could read it in the way his expression hardened, lips thinning and jaw clenching tight.  He lifted his hand toward her, outstretched fingers reaching for her until, with only a barely detectable tremor of hesitation, they brushed gently against the skin at the base of her throat.  It was as much caress as exploration and she reveled in it, committing the feel of that delicate touch to memory so that she could revisit it once she was no longer privy to such attentions any more.

 

“I do hope,” he said, and she could hear the very thinly veiled fury in his voice, “that you returned this favor in kind.”

 

Duval forced herself to focus, to tamp down on the spike of sheer, desperate _want_ that had knifed through her at the first, exquisite slide of his fingertips across her skin.  “In kind,” she said, voice low and rasping, remembering how _good_ it had felt, the press of the knife against Allen’s throat; the impact of knee and face, the crack of cartiledge and the gush of blood, “and then some.”

 

She would enjoy telling him that story, she knew, when the time came to do so.  Most people wouldn’t appreciate it the way she did.  But Khan...he would.  He definitely would.

 

Khan was staring at her as if he didn’t know how to look anywhere else; as if he didn’t _want_ to look anywhere else, his fingers laying now against the side of her neck, his thumb stroking at the hollow of her throat.  With a light nudge of his booted foot, the table that had stood between them was knocked away, skidding across the floor to slam into the wall, but neither of them even glanced at it.  Khan stepped in toward her, shrinking the distance between them even further.  Taking advantage of this new proximity, his hand dropped from her throat, fingers ghosting down her arm, leaving a trail of gooseflesh in their wake.  Those long, elegant fingers wrapped around her right arm, just below the elbow, his touch like gossamer against her skin. 

 

“And these?"  He lifted the arm between them, eyes shifting down to her wrist.  His other hand came up, index finger lightly tracing the jagged, half-healed lines that circled from the heel of her hand to mid-forearm.  “Have these been similarly avenged?”

 

Even the breathless wonder of his touch - the feverish intoxication of his closeness - couldn’t stay the grim satisfaction that welled up in her at his question.  Knowing that he would not think less of her for it, she allowed her lips to curve up into a truly vicious smile, almost eager for him to look up and take note of it as it bent and twisted her lips.  “Not these,” she breathed, “not similarly.  Not at all.”  She leaned in toward him, drawn to him; a compass pulled irresistibly toward true north.  “There were no favors returned _here_.  These,” she lifted her other arm, presenting that wrist to him as well, “were _paid_ for.  In full.”

 

His eyes flicked up to hers, incandescent with approval, that unruly fringe of his hair having been dislodged from its usual obedience - likely from repeated hands drug through it, if she knew him at all.  Worse still, there was the cruel blade of the smile he was currently directing at her; the pair of them, working in tandem to lend him a feral air that was, she thought through a haze of ever burgeoning lust, just downright criminal.  “Were they indeed?”

 

Duval’s expression turned lethal.  “Oh yeah.  Three times over.”

 

Khan stared at her in silence for a long moment, drinking her in with eyes positively alight with wicked approbation.  “Oh, but you are _savage_ , aren’t you?"  The hand that had been tracing the marks on her wrist rose to her face, palming her cheek, his thumb brushing a single, sweeping caress along her cheekbone.  “My ruthless... _radiant_...Rebecca,” he hummed the words, rising heat in his touch, his eyes.  “How I missed you.”

 

His voice...those words...

 

She couldn’t keep away.  Not any more.  Not after that...

 

Without a word - without a sound - she closed the distance between them, falling into him desperately.  Her arms snaked around him, flattened palms sliding up his back until her fingers found the line of his shoulder blades, curling into the fabric there as she pulled herself closer to him and dropped her forehead against his chest.  She hugged him hard, inhaling deeply and pulling the scent of him into her lungs, greedy for as much of him as she could get.  “I missed you too.”

 

At her words, murmured softly into his shirt, just over his heart, Khan sucked in a sharp breath, going rigid in her arms; she could feel the tension in him pull tight...tighter...too tight.  In any other situation, with anyone else, Duval knew that she would have read it as a rebuff.  But now, with him, she knew his reaction for what it was - and more importantly for what it wasn’t. 

 

He’d been told she was dead.  This brilliant, beautiful man - this deadly, dangerous creature who had already lost so, so much - had _believed_ that she, his only companion, was dead and it had _hurt_.  And now finding her alive...he was at something of a loss.

 

She still wasn’t convinced that this...all of this...wasn’t mostly due to the fact that he had no one else.  She wasn’t foolish enough to dismiss his concern for her outright - she knew that he cared about her for herself at least a little bit.  But it was going to take a whole hell of a lot more for her to be convinced that he would still be this caught up in her if his situation were anything other than what it was.   

 

_Fuck it_ , she huffed to herself.  _Enjoy what’s in front of you right now.  Worry about the rest later.  Much...much...later..._

 

She pressed her lips to his chest, kissing him in precisely the same spot that had received her words only moments before, eyes squeezed shut.  And, as if that simple, innocent buss was all it had been waiting for, all that tension just...snapped and Khan collapsed into her with a shuddering exhale.  His arms wrapped around her, crushing her to him as he lowered his head to rest atop hers, cheek against her hair - a circuit completed, energy flowing between them, connecting them.  They stayed that way for countless thumping heartbeats, happily entwined, giving and taking comfort in turn.

 

When Khan eventually lifted his head, Duval kept hers tucked tightly against him, almost afraid to move - terrified of ruining the moment, positive that she somehow would.  But he was having none of that, his hand coming up beneath her chin, urging her to look up at him.  And she, overwhelmed and unsure and skittish as she was, gave in, tipping her face up toward him, knowing that he would be able to see it all, every speck of her uncertainty in the width of her eyes and the flutter of her lashes.

 

For a long moment, he just stared down at her, his own expression a study in extremes.  There was passion burning in the blue; intense, ravenous passion that made the primal, predatory parts of her _howl_ for more...for _him_.  But then too, swirling around and through that lustful darkness, there was also...softness.  Gentleness.  A caring that was so astounding and of such abiding sweetness that it made her heart _hurt_.

 

And then, slowly...so slowly...he leaned down to her, brushing his lips across the center of her forehead, feather-light and almost...reverent.  He repeated the gesture, kissing first one fluttering eyelid and then the other before then planting yet another upon the very tip of her nose.  Duval, whose eyes had drifted shut, bit down hard on her lower lip, utterly undone by his tenderness.

 

“Rebecca.”

 

Her eyes flew open at her name upon his lips - few things sounded better; she could listen to him call her name from now until kingdom come and _still_ not be tired of hearing it.  As soon as her eyes met his, he descended upon her, lips falling onto hers.  His tongue sweeping across her lower lip as if to soothe the places she had just been abusing with her teeth, before pulling back, apparently content to keep the kiss somewhat chaste.

 

Which was just...not going to happen.  Not if she had anything to say about it.

 

She chased after his tongue with her own, licking at the seam of his mouth and seeking... _demanding_...entrance.  She could feel the way he paused, the way he tried...but it didn’t take long for whatever good intentions he’d had to crumble around him and he opened to her, met her tongue with his own and suddenly, what had been chaste turned frantic and fevered.

 

_Much better_ , she moaned to herself after a particularly clever twist of his tongue around her own.  _Much...much better..._

 

Duval’s hands slid up his back - one stopping at the back of his neck, the other continued up into his hair, fingers grasping tight in both spots and pulling him in, urging him further down toward her.  Khan dropped one arm to her waist, hauling her flush against him while his other hand found purchase on the jut of her hip, fingers curling into the fabric of the towel she wore. 

 

Eventually, he tore his mouth from hers with a growl, breath quickened and pupils blown wide as they stared down into hers, that unruly fringe of hair falling across his forehead in exactly the way she liked most, begging to be brushed away.  He looked an absolute _wreck_ and Duval loved _it_.

 

“Why did you stop?”  She breathed the words, leaning into his neck, drawing a line from the point of his pulse down to the collar of his shirt with her tongue.

 

“Rebecca,” his voice was as ragged as the rest of him and she reveled in the knowledge that it was because of _her_ ; she had done that...to _him_.  Khan tipped his head up and she knew that the move was meant to put a bit of distance between them, but Duval just hummed her approval and took full advantage of the greater access he had inadvertently provided for her lips and tongue.  He groaned and shook his head.  “Rebecca, you are injured...”

 

“I’m fine,” she declared, the words muffled by the skin she was nipping and sucking at in turn.  “Don’t...stop...”

 

“I do not intend to,” he choked out, voice tight with concentration.  “But neither do I have any wish to hurt you...”

 

“Go easy on the back of my head,” she cut in, following his train of thought with the ease of experience, “and we’re all good.”  She ran the tip of her nose up the hard, tense line of his throat before teasing the skin just beneath his jaw with the point of her tongue.

 

Khan lifted his hand from her hip and brought it up to weave into her still wet hair, fingers gently seeking and finding the wound she spoke of.  “Just there then," he said, almost to himself; a warning and a reminder all in one. 

 

Duval smiled softly against his neck, quickly blinking away yet another surge of badly timed emotion, not at all accustomed to someone showing her that kind of concern.  “Satisfied now?”

 

“Not now,” he said, dropping his hand back to her hip and folding himself around her, his mouth at her ear, “not ever."  His hand curled tighter into the towel, gathering a handful of the fabric and pulling roughly, yanking it from around her before tossing it away.  She gasped, her head coming up to meet his eyes, mouth agape and breath coming hard and fast.  Khan looked down at her, an inferno in his eyes that were more black than blue as he looked down at her, the hand that had been holding the towel landing on her side, brushing the curve of her now bare breast before sweeping a caress down the length of her side.  “Though hope does spring eternal.”

           

It was like a match to so much tinder - desire sparked and smoldered within her, burning every reservation, every concern, every rational thought she possessed down to ash.  Like flames, it spread beneath her skin, licked along every nerve until finally - magnificently - Rebecca Duval... _ignited_.

 

With a sound that was half sob, half groan, she absolutely _climbed_ him, arms snapping tight around his neck and legs wrapping around his waist as she slammed her mouth into his, stealing his own groan from his lips and swallowing it down.  One of his arms banded tight around her lower back, the other fell lower, calloused palm sliding beneath her thigh, supporting her as they devoured one another.

 

“Bedroom,” she gasped out in between kisses, hands buried in his hair.  She’d spent the past several days in various states of discomfort; she was eager to end that particular trend.  “Now.”

 

Khan said nothing, too busy kissing his way around her jaw to acknowledge the order,  but he obeyed it nonetheless, stumbling blindly across the room toward her door with her still clinging to him like a vine.  The door hissed open as they approached, the sound of it only just managing to catch Duval’s attention as she gave herself up to another bruising kiss.  Pulling back from him just far enough to look down into his face, she grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked his head backwards so that he had no choice but to look at her.  “You fixed my door,” she breathed, swooping down to lick across the sharp line of one perfect cheekbone before pressing an open-mouthed kiss to the skin at the corner of his eye.

 

“I fixed your door,” he agreed, turning and pressing her back against the edge of the doorframe, reaching out blindly to press a button on the control panel as she continued kiss and lick her way across his face, locking the door open.  It was a familiar position, being pressed up against this particular door frame...one that she had to admit, had made something of an impression on her the last time she’d been in it. 

 

Apparently, she hadn’t been alone in that.

 

Which was, she had to admit, really... _really_...fantastic... 

 

Pulling away from her grip on his hair, Khan lowered his head and buried his mouth against her neck, mapping the length of it with lips and teeth as his fingers gripped hard at her hips, urging her down with the pressure of his touch on her skin.  She complied, dropping her feet to the floor, even as she tilted her head up to give him better access, letting out a particularly loud moan when he bit down on the spot where shoulder met neck, sucking hard at the skin there and sending a shock of pleasure straight down to her core.

 

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” she swore and even the word itself trembled as it fell past her lips.

 

Khan, releasing her skin and darting back up to steal another kiss from her lips, flashed her a quicksilver grin.  “That _is_ the point, yes.”

 

He swept in toward her again, sipping at her lips once, twice, before trailing his kisses lower, down her neck, across her clavicle.  He bent further still and finally, finally, finally, his lips brushed the slope of her breast, slid further still to capture an already peaked nipple between the perfect bow of his lips.  He sucked at it hard and then soothed it with swirling sweeps of his tongue and she gasped, one hand slipping into his hair to hold him against her, the other petting and caressing the muscled expanse of his back.

 

Too soon, he pulled away and she whined at the loss. 

 

“Gluttonous girl," he mock chided, grinning again as he leaned the other way, swiftly trapping her other nipple lightly between his teeth, running the point of his tongue over and around it in a quick kiss before he released that one as well.  He righted himself, coming to his full height once more and looking down at her, his expression suddenly turning wolfish... _hungry_...before he dove in toward her, teeth nipping at her ear lobe.

 

“I dreamt of this,” he said, voice lower than she’d ever heard it, a hoarse rumble of sound against her ear, sending a shiver straight through the middle of her, “ _precisely_ this.  You, just here, exactly as you are.  And I...,” he paused, shifted again, finding her mouth and biting at the fullness of her lower lip, breath ragged with lust.  “Will you indulge me?”

 

He spoke the words against her lips and just that quickly, all thoughts of bedrooms and beds and so-called _comfort_ simply evaporated from her brain.

 

“ _God_ , yes,” Duval breathed, not even having to think about it, on fire for him.  “Anything.  Everything.  _Please_.”

 

He pulled back away from her then, but she didn’t have time to be disappointed.  Before her fevered mind could even acknowledge the distance, he had dropped to his knees in front of her, hands at her waist and that clever tongue of his circling her navel and making her gasp all over again.  He looked up at her, hair falling in his eyes which blazed a brighter blue than they had ever been.  His hands moved from her waist, slipping around behind her, cupping the curves of her ass and drawing her toward him, watching her even as he dove forward, mouth finding her center.

 

“Oh...sweet... _Christ_ ,” Duval swore, head dropping backwards, the pain from the wound on her head not even registering through the haze of her lust.  She could feel him - _feel_ him - chuckle against her, low in his throat and she nearly came apart right then.  Her hands scrabbled downward, clutching at his hair as her eyes squeezed shut, all of her focus on him and his mouth and what he was _doing_ with it. 

 

Khan slid a hand down from her ass to the back of her thigh, hauling it up and draping it over his shoulder, opening her to him more fully, his tongue delving deeper, lapping at her furiously.  Duval forced her eyes open and tipped her face down, wanting...needing...to see him.  There was something truly and shatteringly erotic about the sight of him kneeling there, fully dressed and watching her while his mouth did wicked and wonderful things to her body.  It was a sight, she imagined, that she could well and truly get used to...

 

At that moment, his lips found exactly the right spot, closing around her clit and sucking hard.  Duval, who had been embarrassingly close even _before_ indulging him - and wasn’t that funny to think about; that this was somehow _her_ indulging _him_ \- could feel herself losing control, could feel the telltale tightness spreading through her until finally...gloriously...spectacularly...she fell over the edge. 

 

Letting loose a strangled, high-pitched wail, she came harder and longer than she had even believed possible.  When finally the stars exploding behind her eyes had stopped, she nearly collapsed on top of him, her hands landing hard on his shoulders, her muscles - already spent after the past few days - reduced to jelly in the wake of what was undoubtedly one of the best orgasms she would ever have in her life.

 

That being said...

 

Satisfied but far from sated, she urged him to stand hands scrabbling at his waist, pulling at his shirt, yanking it free of his pants.  “Too many clothes,” she rasped out.  “You’re still wearing too many clothes.”

 

All too eager to oblige her, Khan reached down and took the hem of the shirt from her trembling hands and tugging it up and over his head.  Distantly, Duval knew that she wanted to look, to touch, to admire...but frankly, at that moment, she couldn’t find it in her to savor anything beyond the ultimate end that was so near at hand now.  _Next time_ , she promised herself before attacking the fastenings on his pants with the same gusto she had his shirt.

 

Soon enough, he was stripped as bare as she was and they were pressed against one another, each marking the others skin with increasingly rougher caresses and kisses.

 

A last, desperate burst of common sense broke through the haze of passion, reminding her of one very important thing that had to be discussed before they went any further.  “I’m good,” she said, barely even aware of what she was saying.  “I mean, we’re good...for...for _this_.  I’m on...I’ve got...a thing...an implant...”

 

He looked at her blankly for a moment, but then, like a switch being thrown, she saw recognition flare in his eyes.  Somehow, he had actually managed to work out what she meant.  Brilliant, _brilliant_ man.

 

“Excellent,” Khan ground out.

 

“Outstanding,” Duval agreed.

 

And then, he was lifting her again and she was wrapping her legs around his waist again and their mouths were fused together again, all tongues and teeth and voracious, unbridled lust.  Through the fog of it, she could feel one of his hands skate up her back and her neck, slowing and gentling as it reached her head.  He continued to ravage her with his mouth, unrelenting and rapacious, as his fingers wove ever so delicately into her hair.  Carefully, tenderly, he cupped the back of her head and then, in the oddest dichotomy of sensation she had ever experienced, he slammed her back into the doorframe, protecting her head in the cradle of his palm but sparing no mercy for any other part of her.

 

Some women might have balked at that; shied away from such rough handling...but all Duval could think about was how much _harder_ he would be able to do it once she was all healed up.

 

_We_ , she thought shortly, barely able to form the thoughts through her fervor for him, _are going to be really..._ really _...good at this._

 

Mouths still fused together, Duval shifted slightly, wiggling her hand between them.  She trailed her hands down, fingers skimming over the pale expanse of his chest, over the perfect musculature below that she was so _definitely_ going to explore at leisure later and down further still until her fingers brushed against the hot, straining length of him, taking him firmly and tightly in hand.

 

Khan ripped his mouth from hers, head falling backward and eyes almost rolling back into his head, the sound that clawed up out of his throat somewhere between a gasp and a growl.  Grinning, thoroughly enjoying seeing him come undone, Duval began to stroke him, light pulls up and down growing firmer and faster as the growls turned to shattered, desperate groans.  She pushed up, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to his Adam’s apple, enjoying the way it vibrated beneath her lips.

 

After only a few moments of this, Khan pressed his hips forward, head still thrown back and eyes still firmly closed, trapping her hand and his now absolutely rock hard erection between their bodies.  “Rebecca,” he growled, voice strained, “no more, Rebecca.”

 

And he was right.  No more playing.  No more teasing.

 

“No,” she agreed, pushing out with her hips to gain a bit more maneuvering room.  With her free hand, she reached out to him, her hand curling around the back of his neck and drawing his face back to hers, pressing her forehead to his.  She shifted again then, adjusting her grip on him as well as the angle of her body until the tip of him brushed against her, exactly where they both longed for him to be.  “More,” she breathed and his eyes flew open, the blue nearly swallowed whole by black now.

 

With a guttural snarl, Khan thrust home, sliding deep into the warm, wet heat of her.  Duval threw her head back, smacking hard against the cushion of his hand which still hadn’t moved from the back of her head.  Thrashing her head back and forth, shattered by the feel of him inside her, the amazing fullness that was better than anything she’d ever experienced before, Duval let out a strangled cry.  “More,” she repeated, panting the word.  “More...more... _God_ , more...”

 

Khan dropped his head against the taut line of her neck, finding and nuzzling the spot where her pulse pounded frantically against her skin.  Licking at it desperately, he began to move, pulling back and thrusting into her again, and then again...slowly at first, almost tentatively, learning the shape of her, finding a rhythm all their own.  Duval, urging him on with sobs of sheer ecstasy, wrapped her arms around him, cradling his head against her neck with one hand while the other buried itself in his hair, gripping hard at his scalp.  He responded spectacularly, moving faster and harder and even faster still, straining into each thrust and rewarding every sound that tore from her throat with a kiss to her neck.

 

It wasn’t going to last.  Not that first time.  They both knew that.  They’d been working up to this very moment for so long now, dancing around one another until they were both too far gone on the anticipation of it alone.  Finally and yet all too soon, Duval was crying out again, a second and even more powerful orgasm ripping through her as she wailed high and long yet again, her voice cracking as she almost screamed her completion to the rafters above them.  Another two...three thrusts and then Khan was there too, every muscle in his body going rigid as he followed her over the edge.  He came, as he did everything, magnificently - spilling into her with a triumphant roar that rippled over her skin and left a trail of gooseflesh in its wake.

 

For a long moment, they stayed put, neither moving at all; Duval panting towad the ceiling, Khan breathing hard against the skin of her neck.  Eventually, Khan pulled them away from the wall, though he did not move to put her down.  Instead, he reached around, pulling her legs out from around him and catching her up against him, swinging her into his arms.  She was far from a blushing bride, but she couldn’t deny that she enjoyed how it felt to be held like that.  Besides, she wasn’t sure her legs would be able to support her at present, an opinion that she suspected he shared, given their position.

 

Not really caring either way, Duval sighed happily, just enjoying his closeness.  “Just so we’re clear,” she said, tired but content, “feel free to indulge like that as often as you want.” 

 

Chuckling warmly, Khan nuzzled his nose against her temple, pressing light kisses along her hairline.  “I would thank you for that,” he hummed quietly, voice like thick honey, “but I’m rather hoping I’ve already done so.”

 

It was Duval’s turn to laugh as she wrapped her arms around his neck, hugging him close.  “Now you’re just fishing for compliments,” she said as he moved across the room toward her bed.

 

Khan was smiling - a real, wide, honest smile - as he leaned down, releasing her with one arm to grab the bedclothes, pulling them down.  “Yes, I am," he said, entirely unrepentant as he placed one knee on the edge of the bed and leaned in, depositing her gently onto the far side of the small mattress.  “It has been nearly three centuries since last I...indulged,” he cocked his brow suggestively, grin turning wicked.  “Even I require some reassurances after so long.”

 

Duval shook her head at him, smiling like a fool and thoroughly enjoying yet another glimpse at the rarely revealed playful side of the usually all too stoic man before her.  “You’re actually serious, aren’t you?”

 

“Entirely,” he assured, turning and padding away from the bed - a view she very much appreciated.  “You may begin at your convenience.”  He pressed a button and the brightest of the overhead lights flicked off, leaving them in semi-darkness.  When he turned to walk back - a view she very, _very_ much appreciated - he was still smirking.  Widely.

 

“I assume you’re looking for specific detail...”

 

“Mmmm, yes,” he said in a low, resonant rumble that she could feel straight down to her toes.  He sank down onto the bed beside her, legs sliding beneath the covers.  Without warning, he reached for her, arms wrapping around her and drawing her to him, settling her head gently into the crook of his shoulder as he drew the covers up and over them both.  “Though a bit of _explicit_ detail would not go amiss.”

 

It didn’t even occur to her to try to pull away from him, though she had never in the past been one for this particular type of closeness.  Whether that said more about their relationship or her tiredness, she didn’t know.  And frankly, she wasn’t particularly interested in hashing it out just then.  So she set it aside, putting it away for later.

 

Much, much later.

 

She shifted a bit, tipping her head up to look at him.  “So what now?" Duval asked seriously, reaching out to brush the fall of hair off his forehead before running her fingers down the side of his face.  “Is this the part where we talk?”

 

Khan, whose eyes had slid closed at the touch of her fingers on his skin, leaned into her touch, turning his head to press a soft, swift kiss to her hand where it lingered against his cheek.  “No,” he demurred, shifting further down against the pillows.  “Now, we are going to sleep.  You, for obvious reasons that we will discuss, at length, later.  And I, because I have had far too little sleep over the past two weeks, and that by my atrociously lax standards.”

 

It was, quite frankly, a fucking _fantastic_ idea.  Really...the best one she’d heard in a long, long time.  There was so, so much that they needed to talk about, not least of which being what had just happened between them, but he was right.  What she needed more than anything just then was sleep.

 

Lots and lots of sleep.  And somewhere, right in the middle of thinking about how good an idea going to sleep was, Duval did exactly that.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Confession...this was my very first time writing a sex scene. I’ve been dreading tackling this chapter for weeks now, which was why I set the timeline for myself. I knew I needed the pressure of a promise to get it written. Otherwise, I would have hemmed and hawed and found all kinds of excuses to put it off. But, wonder of wonders, I did it! I wrote it and its done and I didn’t die of mortification in the process! Of course, now comes the part where other people read it...but I think I’ll survive. So what do you guys think? Like it? Love it? Loathe it?


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing, except what is mine.
> 
>  
> 
> A/N: First of all, thank you so much for all of the wonderful reviews for the previous chapter! It was an enormous relief to see how well received it was! And now, here’s another chapter done.
> 
> A few warnings on this one...mentions of violence and attempted rape (nothing graphic). And I’ve...ahem...earned the M rating once again.
> 
> As always, enormous thanks and praise to my beta, Xaraphis. She’s quick with praise where earned but pulls no punches when necessary and this story has certainly benefitted from that!

_(The Next Morning)_

  
Duval opened her eyes slowly, blinking into the darkness of her room and feeling, for the first time in days, truly and thoroughly rested. The aches and pains she had suffered since Archanis had faded, eased by the much needed rest. There were also, she swiftly discovered, a host of _new_ aches, dull and sharp in turn and all of them satisfying and entirely welcome. Her lips broke into a slow grin as she recalled the source of those delightful new aches, eyes tripping irresistibly toward the now closed door of her room - and _Christ Almighty_ , she could feel the blush crawling across her skin.

  
She was never going to be able to look at that spot again without smiling. Widely. Possibly stupidly. But honestly, who could blame her? The night before had been...well...

  
She had long admired the single-minded focus he brought to his work. Having all that intensity directed solely at her had been...

  
Well...it had been fucking _amazing_ to be perfectly honest.

  
Loose-limbed and languid, she stretched, enjoying the almost delicious pull of muscle beneath her skin. Her arm brushed the bare, cool sheets beside her and she rolled over, noting with pleasure the evidence that it hadn’t been a dream...that he _had_ , in fact, been there. One corner of her rumpled sheet trailed off the edge of the mattress as if it had been drawn along when he got out of bed. Her second pillow, commandeered by him the night before, she assumed, sat at an angle beside her own.

  
Propping herself up onto an elbow, Duval glanced over at the door once more, listening carefully. She could hear faint noises from the lounge - he was out there now, probably working, if she knew him at all. That he had closed the door suggested that he hadn’t wanted to disturb her; that he _wouldn’t_ disturb her. Assured that her privacy was secure for the time being, she reached out her hand toward the pillow, fingers brushing it softly, dipping down into the faint indent left behind when he’d risen.

  
Feeling a little bit ridiculous but unable to resist the urge, she lowered herself back down, arms wrapping around the pillow and drawing it to her. She pressed her nose into the cool fabric, just where his head had rested and breathed in deeply, her nose filling with the scent of him.

  
It was like a shock to her system; a jolt like pure, radiant sunlight through a sky that had too long been choked with clouds. He was suddenly everywhere; a riotous assault on her senses - the sight, sound, scent, taste and feel of him, all over her. It was glorious and thrilling and she loved it.

  
Duval went suddenly and utterly still, every muscle in her body locking in place and her breath strangling in her throat. Lifting herself slowly away from the pillow, staring at it with something very much like horror, she edged away from it until she was nearly falling off the narrow mattress.

  
God...she _loved_ it. Loved the feeling of it; of him, everywhere, all around her.

  
She loved it. And there was no way she was going to be able to keep it.

  
She wasn’t stupid and she certainly didn’t make a habit of deluding herself with pretty fantasies. This wasn’t going to last. Eventually, she would lose it...all of it. She would lose _him_. The moon circled the Earth and the Earth circled the sun and Rebecca Duval would lose the things she treasured the most. Such was life - such was _her_ life; had been since the day she’d been dumped on her grandparents doorstep, a heartbroken seven year old who had watched her entire world walk away from her without a backwards glance on an otherwise beautiful spring day.

  
That she had forgotten that for even a second - that she had _let_ herself forget - was more than just problematic. It was downright terrifying.

  
She’d always been reckless; had spent most of her life seeking out the kind of danger that normal people wanted no part of. She had made a career out of her habit of playing with fire and if Khan was anything, he was most certainly fire. A flame of an entirely different kind, yes...but one uniquely capable of leaving her world once more in ashes.

  
Which meant that this, despite appearances...this wasn’t anything new. Not really. This was simply a new manifestation of a very old, very risky pattern. One that she would have to take even greater pains than normal to keep a hold on.

  
_But why even bother?_ And it was the tear-stained face of that long ago seven-year-old that she had been who was staring at her accusingly from her mind’s eye, though the voice issuing from those trembling little lips was all grown up. _Why risk it in the first place? You know how it’ll be...you know how it’ll go. And you know you’ll wish you’d left it alone when you’re watching him walk away from you._

  
Sucking in a sharp breath as that thought struck her dead in the center of her chest, Duval rolled up and away from the simple pillow that had triggered this bout of painful introspection to begin with. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she planted her elbows on her knees and dropped her head into her hands.

 

It was true, what her subconscious was trying to tell her in quite possibly the most gut-wrenching way imaginable - it would be smarter to pull back, to distance herself from him like she’d tried so hard to do all those weeks ago. Smarter...easier...and, in the end, far less painful. And she could do it, too. She knew she could.

  
If she was good at anything, it was walking away from potential heartache; she’d been doing it without a second thought since she was seventeen.

  
With that in mind and despite last night, despite everything between them that had come before...she knew she could do it. She could walk out that door, put him back at arms length and protect herself from the worst of the guaranteed heartbreak. It would be all too easy, really. All she would need to do was to claim she hadn’t been thinking clearly. Hadn’t been thinking rationally. Hell...that she hadn’t been thinking at all. She could push him away and shore up her defenses and get through this whole thing with as little extra pain as possible.

  
She pressed her face harder into her hands, a lump settling in her chest, just above her heart.

  
Yes, she knew what she _could_ do. She even knew what she _should_ do. But those two things were very, very different from what she knew she was _going_ to do.

  
The first thing she was going to do was to determine whether she even had anything to be eating her heart out over in the first place. All of this, every drop of her current angst, was predicated on the assumption that Khan would even _want_ to continue on the path they’d started down the previous evening. All things considered, it seemed like a perfectly safe assumption to make.

  
But again, Duval wasn’t stupid.

  
If there was one hard and fast rule that she had learned about life in general, it was that _things change_. And when they do, they do so abruptly and completely without warning. You could go to bed one night absolutely certain of your life and the people in it, but wake up the next day to find everything that you’d thought you’d known turned entirely on its head. And because she knew that - and likely far better than most - she knew that she could easily walk out that door and come face to face with a man who no longer had any use for her outside of their professional endeavors.

  
It was, admittedly, _unlikely_. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t _possible_.

  
So she would be reserved. She would be cautious. She would take her cues from him and when she was satisfied that they were on the same page... _then_ she would take all necessary precautions.

 

Because if he _did_ want to carry on...

  
Well, for once in her life, she wasn’t going to do the smart thing...the _easy_ thing.

  
She was going to enjoy herself. She was going to enjoy this for what it was - or at least, for what she would allow it to be. She would keep her feet firmly on the ground and her heart entirely to herself, but she was going to let herself savor each moment and revel in each new experience and she absolutely was _not_ going to let herself miss out on the closest she might ever come to having a real relationship. Thirty-four was far from old, but it was old enough to know that something like that didn’t happen every day. Not for people like her.

  
She’d had little enough to celebrate in her life and frankly, she felt she was due a few good memories. Which was why she would cultivate exactly that. She would collect anything and everything that came of their partnership, sift through them and pick out all the best bits. She would pack them up as securely as she knew how and store them away so that when the end _did_ inevitably come, she would have a whole hoard of memories to sustain her once all that borrowed brilliance had gone away again.

  
Because it would. It always did.

  
Duval scrubbed her hands over her face, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and letting out a very long, very deep sigh, shoulders stooped beneath the weight of heavy thoughts. For a long moment, she considered laying back down, yanking the covers over her head and going back to sleep. It would definitely be a way to put off having to face him; to put off having to face everything that came along with facing him. But while she might be particularly skilled at running away, she was, conversely, not at all one to put off a task that needed doing.

  
Which was why she was out of bed and over at her closet before she had even consciously made the decision to move that way. Pulling it open, her hands hovered over the clothing within - her habitual black; her Section issue armor - but before she could pull any of it out, she changed her mind. Closing the closet once more, she turned away from it, padding over to her dresser instead.

  
If she was going to do this, then she was going to do it. If he was going to claim to want her, then he was going to get _her_. Not Lieutenant Rebecca Duval, hard-nosed secret operative - just _her_ , Rebecca Duval, with no add-ons necessary. And _just_ Rebecca Duval didn’t want to lounge around in skin tight pants and shirts. _Just_ Rebecca Duval liked a little more casualness and a lot more comfort in her wardrobe.

  
A few minutes later, dressed in a pair of loose-fitting black pants and a simple black camisole over an even simpler but equally black sports bra, hair hanging loose around her face, she felt a whole lot more like _just_ Rebecca Duval than she had in quite some time. And it was a surprisingly good feeling.

  
Decided and determined, she turned toward the door and took a deep breath, centering herself...preparing herself.

  
_Make the most of it_ , she told herself firmly. _Remember what it is and what it isn’t, but make the most of it._

  
Head held high, she moved toward the door, breezing through it as it opened ahead of her as if she hadn’t a single care in the world.

  
And stopped, dead in her tracks the minute her eyes fell on Khan, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a gun in his lap, surrounded by parts and tools. His feet were bare, as was his wont, but - in a striking departure from the familiarity of the scene - so too was his chest. He sat there in nothing but a pair of his black pants with his hair falling in his eyes and a smudge of grease across one cheek while he fitted together pieces of his newest prototype and Duval’s heart and stomach started doing synchronized somersaults.

  
At that exact moment, he looked up at her, tossing his head to clear the fringe from his eyes and triggering another twist and flip of her insides. His eyes as they found hers were soft, the smile that pulled at the corner of his mouth even softer and she was reasonably certain that she’d never seen anything more compelling in her entire life - and it left her shaken like few things ever had before.

  
“Good morning, Rebecca.”

  
The words washed over her, warm and welcoming. Swallowing hard against a lump in her throat - it had been a long, _long_ time since anyone had sounded that pleased to see her - she forced her own lips up into an answering grin. “Good morning,” she returned, nervous fingers tucking her hair behind her ears. After a moment, she made herself look away, ducked her head and made for the bathroom, feeling the heat of his eyes on her the entire way.

  
Once the door had closed behind her, she leaned back against it, taking a few deep, calming breaths in an attempt to ease her roiling thoughts. If nothing else, the warmth of his greeting had certainly answered the question of whether or not he intended to pursue something more than they’d already shared - he wasn’t the sort of man to put forth that kind of effort if he didn’t. Part of her couldn’t help but be disappointed by that; if _he’d_ been the one to pull away, it would have made everything so much simpler for _her_. But there was a much larger part of her that heaved a guilty sigh of relief, awash with the realization that she wasn’t anywhere close to having her fill of him yet.

  
When she felt the worst of her rattled nerves abate, she pushed away from the door and set to the familiar cadence of her morning ablutions. Despite all of her misgivings, she rushed through the routine, eager for the very real - if confusing - pleasure of his company. In only a few minutes and far too soon, she was facing the bathroom door - facing the prospect of yet more potentially heart-rending interaction.

  
_You can do this_ , she told herself firmly. _You know what you want and you know what you can’t have and there’s nothing to be worked up about. Nothing at all. So take a deep breath and just relax._

  
“Just relax,” she murmured to herself, following her advice and taking a long, slow breath. “Just...breathe.”

  
She stepped forward and the door hissed open ahead of her. She walked out into the lounge with her head high, refusing to allow any of her struggle to show in her carriage. Khan had moved while she was in the bathroom, sitting now on the couch rather than the floor, the weapon he’d been working on sitting on the floor by his feet. He was watching her carefully, expression still open but with a shadow of wariness lurking in the pale blue of his gaze.

  
She didn’t like that. Didn’t at all like seeing him suffer even marginally because of her too obvious doubts. Brushing everything else aside and focusing entirely on the driving instinct to wipe that particular darkness from his eyes, Duval started forward, edging around the furniture that separated them. She stopped in front of him, her bare feet between his. He tipped his head up in response to her closeness, eyes seeking hers, the questions in them like sandpaper across her heart.

  
She lifted her right hand to his face, fingers drawn irresistibly to the smudge of grease across his cheekbone, her touch lingering against the surprising heat of his skin. “You let me sleep,” she said quietly, trying at teasing - remembering all the times she’d been woken far too soon by his impatience. “I didn’t think you knew how to do that.”

  
Khan’s smile widened, the wariness receding, though it did not disappear entirely. “Yes, well...all things considered,” he reached for her hand; long, elegant fingers wrapped gently around her palm and drew it toward his mouth, lips pressing a string of gentle, lingering kisses to the healing marks around her wrist, “I rather thought you had earned as much uninterrupted rest as you pleased."

  
The way he was touching her...the way he was looking at her...it was overwhelming.

  
Completely and utterly overwhelming and she could feel herself losing what little courage she’d managed to scrape together.

  
Heart thudding hard in her chest and tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, Duval drew back from him, pulling her hand from his grasp as she took one, then two steps backwards. “Thank you,” she said, voice strained, her posture screaming withdrawal with every flinch and twitch. “It was very kind of you.”

  
Oh, that hadn’t come out the right way at all - remote, distant, detached; not even close to how she’d meant it. And if she could hear all of that for herself, she knew that he certainly would as well.

  
“Yes, I suppose it was... _kind_ of me.”

  
The wariness had come rushing back in, though stronger now, a frown sitting heavily between his drawn brows. She winced and looked away from him, the sting of tears growing stronger as frustration with herself - with her inability to outmaneuver her own over-developed defense mechanisms - burned hot and bright behind her ribs. “I wasn’t...I didn’t...” she stopped, huffing out a breath of agonized frustration and giving a sharp shake of her head - she was even worse at this than she’d assumed she would be.

  
She couldn’t do this. How in the hell had she ever thought that she could _do_ this?

  
“I need coffee,” she blurted out, whirling around and bolting toward the synthesizer on the far side of the room, berating herself as a coward with every rushed step she took away from him. This wasn’t how she’d wanted to do things. It certainly wasn’t the way to gain herself all those good memories she’d been hoping to collect.

  
When she reached the little kitchenette, she stopped, blinking tear-blurred eyes fiercely. The part of her that was already far too attached to him - a part that was growing almost exponentially of late - was throwing an absolute fit, yelling at her in no uncertain terms that she couldn’t just leave things like that. She needed to say something. She needed to tell him...

  
To tell him...

  
“I’m not good at this,” she admitted in a rush, voice cracking on the last word. “I know I’m not and I’m _sorry_. I react... _God_...I react so badly and then I turn around and say all the wrong things and I’m...I’m _trying_. I’m trying so _hard_ and I promise that it’ll get better...that _I’ll_ get better at...”

  
She got no further than that; she was cut off mid-sentence, spun around by gentle hands on her shoulders that slid slowly up to bracket her face, thumbs caressing her cheeks as he drew her toward him. His lips slid over hers, capturing her mouth and kissing her soundly until every ounce of tension drained right out of her. When he finally pulled away from her, he didn’t go far, keeping his hands on her cheeks and pressing his forehead to hers, eyes closed.

  
“You need not apologize to me, Rebecca. You need only tell me this...have you any regrets?”

  
It took her a moment to understand him and when she did, she still didn’t really understand. Of every concern that she’d had...every terrified thought that had plagued her...not once had it occurred to her to _regret_ what had happened last night. “Are you...you can’t be serious. You’re worried that _I_ might have regrets?”

  
“Regrets...a change of heart,” he said, that same shadow of guarded concern in his voice that she had seen in his eyes earlier. “Answer me truly, Rebecca...do you want _this_?”

  
That he felt the need to ask the question in the first place was absolutely stunning to her - didn’t he know? Couldn’t he _see_?

  
Duval reached up, hesitating only a moment before placing her hands on his where they still rested on her cheeks, rubbing small circles against the backs of his hands with her thumbs. “Something tells me it should be _me_ asking _you_ that. I feel like I’m on entirely the wrong end of this conversation.”

  
“Rebecca,” Khan said her name like a warning, voice a low growl that she could feel down to her toes.

  
“Yes,” she breathed out, obeying the command in his voice like the supplicant that she very much was _not_. “Yes, I want this. No regrets. And I’m not just saying that. I don’t regret any of this. I might’ve had second and even third thoughts, but that’s just me being me and you shouldn’t think anything of it, really you shouldn’t and...”

  
He was kissing her again, silencing her once more with his lips and the deft stroke of his tongue along hers as he curled his larger body over her, around her. It was a slow, sweet kiss; more a caress than a challenge and it left Duval wanting very much to fold herself into him, to wrap herself in the respite of him and tell the rest of the universe to go to hell.

  
Which really, when she thought about it, was a fantastic idea.

  
It _could_ go to hell. All of it...straight to hell.

  
There would be time enough to deal with everything. Later. Much, much later.

  
She sighed into his mouth, pushed up onto her toes and threw herself headlong into the kiss, taking every ounce of his reassurance and pouring it back into him. Her hands tightened on his, holding him to her, blunt nails pressing lines into the unyielding warmth of his skin.

  
Khan answered her passion with his own, stepping in closer, drawing her to him ever more firmly as he deepened the kiss, the sweetness swiftly dissolving into unrepentant lust. One long-fingered hand slid downward, tracing the line of her collarbone before dipping lower to claim the swell of her right breast through the layers of her shirt and bra. With a mewling cry, Duval pushed into his touch, begging for more. Quick to oblige, Khan’s clever fingers found her nipple where it peaked through the thin fabric, flicking and rolling it deftly, finding just the right mix of pain and pleasure and dragging another ragged cry from her throat. Duval, want pooling in her belly, pulled back from him ever so slightly, separating herself from him just enough to sink her teeth into the pillow of his lower lip, nipping at him, sharp and hard and quick.

  
His reaction was instantaneous - he froze, every lithe inch of him going still; a predator suspended in the moment before the strike. And then, like a damn breaking, he fell upon her, mouth claiming hers once more as he pressed forward, rushing her backwards until the small of her back hit the edge of their little dining table.

  
His hands pulled away from her, breaking contact only to grab her round the waist, hauling her up and onto the cool metal surface, his lips never leaving hers. Her hands immediately dropped to the waist of his pants, clawing at the fastenings and then shoving them down, freeing him of the clinging black fabric. His own hands were hard at work as well, tearing at the loose waist of her own pants, working them over her hips.

  
No words were necessary, both of them in perfect, unspoken accord and Duval could have sobbed her joy as all of those doubts, every single concern and worry was swallowed up in the certainty that she wanted more. More of this. More of him. Always, always more of him.

  
While they continued to devour one another with their mouths, Khan grabbed her hips, jerking her to the very edge of the table. He leaned over her then, bending her slightly backwards and supporting them with one arm around her back and the other propped on the table before slamming into her with one swift, sharp thrust. Duval, groaning deep in her throat, brought her legs up, hooking one around his waist and the other around the back of one of his thighs. Her arms wrapped around him, hugging him close; her palms flattened against the smooth planes of his back as she pushed against him, meeting each thrust eagerly.

  
Once they had found their rhythm, Khan moved the hand that had been flat against the table between them, long, skillful fingers finding her center and stroking her roughly in time with his increasingly erratic thrusts. She had already been hovering on the brink; the added friction took her the rest of the way over and a moment later she tore her mouth from his, her head dropping backwards as she gasped out her completion, her fingers raking across his skin. His pace increased even further, his head tipping forward until his forehead rested at the base of her throat and then he was there as well, falling over the edge with a choked groan, the arm around her waist contracting, pulling her even closer.

  
They stayed that way for a few moments, breathing deep, entirely wrapped up in one another. Eventually, Khan lifted his head, peering at her from beneath the fringe that had fallen across his forehead yet again, a wry grin on his lips and a glint in his eye. “At this rate, we will have done this on every obliging surface of these rooms except the beds.”

  
Duval let out a whoop of laughter, the last bits of her anxiety fading away, temporarily eased by his unexpected levity. Serene now in both mind and body, she tightened her arms around him, leaning up into him and embracing him with impetuous affection. “Sounds like a hell of a plan to me,” she said slyly, turning her face into his and pressing a lingering kiss to his temple before pulling back far enough to shoot him a coy smirk. “Beds are overrated.”

  
“So says the woman who has spent the past fourteen hours availing herself of one,” Khan shot back, the glint in his eyes turning playful as he pulled away from her, extending a hand toward her in a gesture that managed to be somehow unspeakably dignified despite his state of dress.

  
Or undress, as it were.

  
“I said they were overrated," she defended, taking his hand and accepting his help to hop down off the table, “not useless." Standing next to him now, Duval suddenly became fully and discomfitingly aware of her half-clothed body. Blushing something fierce, she dipped down and grabbed her discarded bottoms off the floor, yanking them up in a rush and trying very hard not to look like she was watching him sort out his own clothing with avid interest.

  
When she glanced up and saw him watching her with a knowing leer that was at once deliciously predatory and irritatingly self-satisfied, her blush deepened even further, painting her cheeks and ears bright red. _Of course_ he had noticed her looking...and _of course_ he had no qualms about letting her know that he knew. Feigning annoyance, she crossed her arms over her chest. “Smug isn’t sexy, you know.”

  
If anything, his smile turned even _more_ smug. “Yes, it is.”

  
Rolling her eyes, she tried and failed to keep her own grin from widening. “That ego of yours gets any bigger and I’m not sure there’ll be enough room in here for all three of us.”

Khan stepped toward her, leaning down to steal a quick kiss. “I think,” he murmured against her mouth, “that you rather _like_ my ego.”

  
“Good thing,” she retorted archly, enjoying the way her lips brushed his with every word. “If I didn’t, we’d be in trouble.” At that exact moment, her stomach let out an unholy gurgle of sound, loudly declaring its current dissatisfaction. Duval pull away from him, putting a bit of distance between them. She flattened her hand across her mid-section and grimaced. “Well...that’s a hell of a mood breaker.”

  
“I assume you’ve eaten nothing since you arrived back yesterday...”

  
She shook her head, eyeing the time glowing on the wall behind him. “I had other things on my mind.” Her stomach growled again, hunger clawing insistently at her insides now that she’d deigned to notice it. “Did I really sleep for fourteen hours?”

  
“You did,” Khan affirmed, suddenly looking oddly...sheepish. Or, as close to it as she figured it was possible for him to look. “I...regret that you were left to wake alone. I did attempt to remain with you until you woke, but I...”

  
“Got bored,” Duval finished for him, lifting her hand to brush back that too-tempting fringe once again, already addicted to the feel of those night black strands against her fingertips. “I know. I know _you_. You don’t need to apologize for it.” She dropped her hand and bounced lightly on her toes, practical considerations drawing her attention away from him. “I’m gonna run to the bathroom real quick. Have you eaten yet this morning? If you have, don’t worry about it, but if you _haven’t_...”

  
“I am not hungry,” he cut in, reaching out to turn her toward the other end of the room, hands on her shoulders, “but I will gladly see to your breakfast...and, of course, your coffee.”

  
Well that was...unexpected. She wasn’t used to anyone being so eager to go out of their way for her anymore than she was used to anyone being familiar enough with her habits to anticipate them.

  
Her back was to him, but her surprise at his offer must have communicated itself somehow because Khan leaned in, pressed his lips softly to the back of her head, just over the still ginger wound on her scalp. “I know _you_ as well, Rebecca,” he murmured against her hair, giving her shoulders a squeeze. “Now go.”

  
She staggered forward, urged on by the gentle pressure of his hands. He seemed to be making something of a habit of throwing her for a loop; he also seemed to be thoroughly enjoying doing so. It was mildly annoying, but she certainly couldn’t blame him for it - there’d been no shortage of satisfaction on her part the few times she’d managed to do the same to him, after all.

  
When Duval re-emerged from the bathroom several minutes later, it was to find that he was, unsurprisingly, as good as his word. There was a steaming cup of coffee sitting on the small, square table beside her chair. Beside that, sat a plate of white toast, each piece slathered liberally with butter and honey.

  
She shouldn’t have been surprised that he remembered exactly how she liked her toast; the man could speed read his way through treatises on theoretical quantum physics once and then recite them back word for word. But she was surprised and, in an odd way, touched. That fact that he’d even bothered to take note in the first place, that he’d paid even that much attention...it _meant_ something.

  
It meant so much more than she would ever have the courage to admit.

  
Banishing that thought as soon as it coalesced, Duval hurried forward, crawling over the arm of her chair and folded herself, cross-legged, into the seat. She reached for the plate, setting it in her lap before grabbing for the cup and taking a slurping sip of the searing hot chicory.

  
She gave a groan of pleasure as the familiar and much-loved flavor rolled across her tongue. “Oh God...I missed this while I was gone.”

  
Khan, lounging on the sofa across from her, arched a brow at her. “You would do well to give as much attention to the toast - I can hear your stomach from here. How long _has_ it been since last you ate, Rebecca?”

  
“I ate a little bit yesterday morning before I left Mars 3, but not as much as I probably should have,” she admitted, picking up a slice of the toast, swiping a finger through the honey and then sucking it clean, savoring the sweetness. “After everything...well, let’s just say I was a bit eager to get back.”

  
“Ah, yes,” Khan said, drawing out the words, his expression darkening slightly, “ _everything_. I am quite eager to learn precisely what this _everything_ entails.”

  
Duval took a large bite of toast, buying herself a few moments as she chewed and swallowed. “You want the whole story, don’t you?”

  
“To the last detail,” he affirmed.

  
She sighed, taking another swig of her coffee. “I figured. Unfortunately, I can’t tell the whole story - it was a classified op.”

  
He didn’t like that; she could see it on his face plain as day. He was not at all happy that she wouldn’t give him the details he wanted. But she was still an Agent first and foremost - he was just going to have to deal with a certain amount of disappointment.

  
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said, shaking her head and pointing the corner of a triangle of toast at him accusingly, “and don’t act like you’re surprised. You know how this works.”

  
“Fine. Not everything then,” he said at length, his displeasure still perfectly evident. “But you can certainly tell me _enough_. You can, at the very least, explain why Marcus believed you had been...,” he stopped, looking away from her, jaw clenched, “...why he believed you would not be coming back.”

  
Duval, seeing his upset and feeling her heart twist in response, dropped her gaze to the plate in her lap, poking at the remaining slices of toast with the half-eaten one still in her hand. “I’m sorry you had to hear that...”

  
“Do not apologize for it,” he cut her off, the words sharp and quick as they tripped off his tongue. “Explain why it occurred in the first place.”

  
Her eyes lifted to his, resigned. “You’re not going to like it.”

  
“Of that I have absolutely no doubt,” he bit out. “But I will have this story from you, Rebecca. I will know why an assignment that you described as _simple_ ended as this one did.”

  
She sighed and set her plate aside, her appetite abandoning her for the present. Settling further into the chair, figuring she could at least be as physically comfortable as possible for what was sure to be en emotionally _un_ comfortable conversation, she dropped her hands onto her bent knees. “I didn’t lie to you - the mission itself was a simple one. Or it would have been, if I’d been sent out alone as I’d initially been intended to. But I wasn’t sent alone and my... _partner_...proved...unreliable.”

  
Khan was instantly on point, eyes narrowing as he sat up straighter, bare feet flat on the floor and his body a rigid line from head to tailbone. “Explain.”

  
It was an order, no other way around it. A command, issued by a man who was very clearly accustomed to being obeyed. Any other time, it would have annoyed her. But now...

  
Now she embraced his high-handedness. It was familiar, easily relatable - following orders was second nature to her and it made it so much easier to get the story out.

  
Duval kept her eyes on his, relaxing into the well-rehearsed role of reporting Agent. “Long story short, my partner got herself in trouble. I went in, got her out of it and earned this,” she cocked her head, tilting the back of it toward him, “for my troubles. I woke up tied to a chair and looped all to hell from the blow to the head. My partner came back but decided that instead of helping me, she was going to steal the intel I’d gathered and then ditch me there. Luckily, with a little work, I was able to get myself out of trouble again, but by the time I got to where we’d left our ship, she was already gone. So then I hitched a ride and got back here as fast as I could only to find out that the fucking _bitch_ had reported me _dead_.”

  
His jaw clenched again, hands curling into white-knuckled fists where they rested on the tops of his thighs. “ _That_ part I am well aware of. That part, I experienced first hand.”

  
“Yes, you did," She paused, lips curling into a lethal grin, “which is why I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that I expressed my extreme displeasure with the situation to her after I learned what she’d done.”

  
“That depends very much on the magnitude of euphemism you are employing.”

  
Duval’s lips twitched, a bit of remembered satisfaction burning in her chest. “I broke her face on my knee.”

  
Khan’s eyes narrowed. “Not good enough. You ought to have killed her.”

  
“Oh, believe me - I wanted to. Hell...I was about to. But then security was called and then Marcus was there and the moment was just shot all to hell. So I ended up settling for the face-breaking scenario, which yes, I know, leaves something to be desired. But Marcus did assure me that her career is finished, so I guess that’s just gonna have to be good enough.”

  
“Is she still on Io?”

  
Duval shot him a look. She knew him well enough to hear what he really meant in asking that question. “I don’t know why it matters either way - you _can’t_ do anything about her; not with things being the way they are. So, I think it’s best for everyone involved if we just assume that she’s already long gone and move on from there accordingly. So in the spirit of _moving on_ , what else do you want to know about?”

  
“I want her name, Rebecca.”

  
She sighed, shook her head - it had at least been worth a shot. “Does it really matter? It’s over, Khan. It’s done.”

  
“It is _not_ done,” he said, sounding so calm and reasonable that she knew he was actually far from feeling either, “and it most certainly _does_ matter. Now...her name.”

  
There really was no point in not telling him. He was going to find out sooner or later...and one way or another. If she wouldn’t give him what he wanted to know, he would simply seek out the information for himself elsewhere. Frankly, she preferred that he heard it from her; him trusting her was far more important than temporarily saving herself from his disapproval. Lightly resting her head against the back of the chair, she let out a put upon sigh. “Fine. You win...it was Allen.”

  
“Allen.”

  
She watched him flip through his mental files, placing the name. She also saw the exact moment when he found the match he was looking for. His eyes caught fire, twin balls of burning blue flame glaring out at her from a face gone stony. “You refer, I assume, to Agent Elizabeth Allen, assistant to the Facility Commander. Agent Allen, who unabashedly and _translucently_ sought to usurp your position. Agent Allen, who you knew, without question, had been actively plotting your demise for some time. Is this the _Allen_ that you speak of with such casual disregard?”

  
She’d expected him to be annoyed - hell, she was annoyed with _herself_ for not putting her foot down about Allen tagging along - but that had been a whole hell of a lot more than mere irritation. He was swiftly approaching full on _livid_ and he appeared to be directing every single bit of it solely at her.

  
Because that was exactly what she needed right now...a contemptuous, scolding sermon from the most disdainful man in the universe. Fucking lovely.

  
“Yep,” she said, popping the p and crossing her arms over her chest, knowing how childish she probably looked but unable to bring herself to care, “that’s the one.”

  
Her petulance was kindling for the fire and the flames in his eyes leapt higher in response. “And yet, knowing all of that, you chose _her_ to be your partner?”

  
“I didn’t choose anything,” Duval snipped. “I hate running tandems. If it had been up to me, I’d have worked the op one hundred percent solo. But it wasn’t up to me and I wasn’t about to argue too hard against Marcus when I’d only just gotten myself out of shit with him.”

  
“ _Marcus_?” Khan snarled the name. “It was _Marcus_ who put your life in such needless jeopardy?”

  
Oh Lord...now she’d gone and opened up a whole other can of worms.

“No,” she said slowly, deliberately, “that was all Allen. Marcus couldn’t have known she would do what she did - not when _I_ didn’t even know she would do what she did.”

  
“Marcus gave the order...”

  
“Marcus gives a lot of orders to a lot of people every day," Duval said hotly. “You’re letting your bias get the better of you right now, which I get. Really, I do. No one understands better than I do how much you hate Marcus and why...but you can’t put the blame on him for this one. _He_ isn’t responsible for _her_ actions, Khan.”

  
“And thus speaks the Admiral’s ever faithful handmaiden,” Khan sneered, a look of utter disgust on his face. “Your loyalty is truly touching, Rebecca.”

  
He’d gone too far with that. Too. Far.

  
Duval shot up out of her chair, the temper she’d been working so hard to reign in slipping its leash and erupting out of her.

  
“Don’t,” she spat, jabbing an accusatory finger in his direction. “Don’t even try to pull that dancing monkey bullshit with me on this. I’m not _defending_ Marcus, Khan. I’m just telling you to put the blame where it belongs. _Allen_ is responsible for _Allen’s_ actions. She’s the one who held a knife to my throat and she’s the one who lifted the intel off me and then left me there to die when she couldn’t manage to kill me herself.”

  
His expression had gone cold now, blank. “Careful, Lieutenant...you are coming dangerously close to sharing _classified_ details with a captured enemy. Whatever would the Admiral say?”

  
“Details?” Duval took another step toward him, vibrating with anger. “Are we back on that now? I’m sorry, I thought we were playing the blame game. But then, I guess there’s no reason why we can’t do both. Kill two birds with one stone, right? And since that’s the direction you think we need to be headed, I suppose I ought to take a bow and own up to my own slice of the pie. Because _I’m_ the one who encouraged Allen to do the side work that ended up getting her captured. _I’m_ the one who didn’t pay attention when I was getting her out of there, which means _this_ ,” she gestured sharply to the back of her head, “was _my_ fault.”

  
She held her arms out, presenting her wrists. “These? These were all me. Thin, stiff rope is a real _bitch_ to try to get out of, let me tell you.” She took another step toward him, tilting her head up and pointing at the line across her neck. “Even this one’s mine. Allen held the knife to my throat, but I’m the one who leaned into it. Intimidation tactic on my part. I figured the best way to keep her from killing me was to scare her off. Worked, too. She bolted pretty damn quick after that. Then it was just a bunch of waiting and thinking. Boring really. Until, of course, one of the idiots who’d captured me decided to try adding rape to his resume.”

  
And then, suddenly, Khan was on his feet as well, stepping into her and wrapping his hands around her upper arms, grip firm but surprisingly gentle. The expression on his face had shifted, blazing once more, only now she could see more horror than ire in his violently blue gaze. “And did he...”

  
“I said _try_ didn’t I?” She shook her head. “Now, I know you want details, but I’ve gotta ask, how much do you need? I’m sorry to be difficult, but I’m just not used to having to give a blow by blow of anything that wasn’t pertinent to the mission. Can’t be dirtying up the post-op debriefs with any of the nastier stuff, you know - Marcus can be a bit _squeamish_ that way. So I mean, do you want to hear _exactly_ how close he got? Do I need to list every place he touched before I buried a metal rod in his eye socket?”

  
Khan yanked her to him, his arms sliding around her and pressing her close, his chin resting on the top of her head. “Enough,” he murmured against her hair. “That’s enough, Rebecca.”

  
She stood rigid within the circle of his arms, refusing to allow herself to relax into him the way a very large part of her wanted to do. “Oh, I’m sorry...was that too much? I’m just trying to give you what you want...and you wanted _details_. You should feel special; not even Marcus has heard all this yet. I guess I’m not as dedicated a lackey as you keep accusing me of being.”

  
“Rebecca...”

  
His voice shook - actually _shook_ \- when he said her name, his arms tightening around her almost desperately. Against her will, tears sprung up in her eyes, but she kept her arms firmly at her sides.

  
“Is it always going to be like this?” Her own voice cracked, her anger slowly leaching away, leaving her nothing but tired. “Are you ever going to be able to separate me from Marcus in your head? Because if not, I think it would be best if we just stopped...whatever the hell it is that we’re doing here. I’ve done...” she paused, swallowed hard, trying very, very hard not to cry, “I’ve tried so hard to show you that I’m not just a puppet for that man. But every time I think I’ve managed it, something goes wrong and you go right back to treating me like a flunky.”

  
For a long moment, there was nothing but silence and the sound of his hand sliding up and down the length of her back, calloused fingers rasping across skin and fabric alike.

  
“You asked me earlier to be patient with you,” he said at last, his voice, subdued as it was, still managing to send tremors along every nerve. “I can only ask for the same consideration in return.” He pulled back, hands sliding to her arms then up until he was cupping the base of her jaw in both of his long, elegant hands. “This is...unfamiliar ground for me as well, Rebecca.”

  
She knew him well enough to recognize just how enormous an admission that was for him. So enormous that she could feel the last of her anger dissipate like smoke on a strong wind. “I can appreciate that,” she said quietly. “But you didn’t answer my question.”

  
He stared at her in silence for several heartbeats, eyes searching hers intensely. She could almost see the thoughts churning in his brain; could feel just how hard this actually was for him. Finally, as if he had come to a decision, he let out a soft, sighing breath; a resigned exhale.

  
“I am constantly learning what you are, Rebecca,” he said at length, sounding as wrung out as she felt, “but I already know well what you are not. I cannot promise you that I will never make such unfair allusions again. But I give you my word that I will _try_.”

  
He ducked his head, softly brushing his lips over hers in a chaste kiss before pulling back to meet her eyes. “Will that answer suffice?”

  
Duval smiled, strained and a little sad, but a smile nonetheless. “I think I can live with it,” she assured. She certainly couldn’t ask him for anything more than that; not when she had so much she needed to work on herself. They were a hell of a pair, in so many different ways...and not all of them good. “This is a disaster waiting to happen,” she said tiredly, shutting her eyes and loosing a single tear that then traced slowly down her cheek. “You know that, right?”

  
“Undoubtedly," he agreed, smiling at her softly as he brought his thumb up to catch the rogue drop, brushing it away with a sweeping caress. “And a marvelous catastrophe it could well be...”

  
His voice trailed off, his words hanging heavy in the air between them - words both said _and_ unsaid.

  
_...if you let it..._

  
She could hear those unspoken syllables as clear as day, could feel them in the way his fingertips pressed into her skin. This man...this breathtaking, awe-inspiring, wonder of a man was giving _her_ the power. Letting _her_ make the call.

  
And damned if that wasn’t exactly what she needed.

  
He couldn’t be hers. Not really. Certainly not forever.

  
But for _now_?

  
Yeah...for now...she would take it. All of it. As much as he was willing to give for as long as he was willing to give it. And then, when it was gone, as it inevitably would be, she would have the memories of what was bound to be a truly incredible experience to look back on for the rest of her life.

 

Duval sighed, the last bits of tension in her body releasing. She opened her eyes and returned his smile with a grin of her own. Her hand came up, swiping at the grease smudge that still marked his cheek - it occurred to her that she should probably mention it to him, but couldn’t quite muster the will to do so. It was an unexpectedly good look on him, that incongruous smudge on his otherwise perfect face; she was far more fond of it than she probably should have been.

  
“Considering our history so far, I’d say that sounds just about right,” she said, dropping her hand from his face to press against one of his where it still cradled her jaw, “and I’ve always been really good in a crisis.”

  
Understanding flashed across his face, his smile widening, the skin around his eyes crinkling appealingly. He lowered his head, bussing a quick kiss to the tip of her nose before resting his forehead against hers. “Of that,” he said, voice a tantalizing rumble, “I have absolutely no doubt.”

  
They stood that way for several heartbeats, their mutual acceptance rendering the quiet moment strangely comfortable. Eventually, the reality that she had consciously set aside for the duration of their conversation reared its head, prodding at her none too gently.

  
She would have been perfectly content to stay with him, sequestered away from everything outside their door, for the rest of the day. God knew she’d earned the rest. But there were things she needed to do before that could happen.

  
Giving his hand a squeeze, she pulled away from him slightly. “As much as I hate to say it,” she said, allowing her regret to show in her tone, “I’ve got things to do today.”

  
Khan dropped his hands away from her face with a sigh. “Yes, I suppose you do - reporting to Marcus being one of them, I should assume.”

  
Duval nodded, her grin turning wry. “Honestly, I’m surprised he’s let me be for as long as he has. He’s probably chomping at the bit right about now to get the full story. I’ll see him first and then, depending on what time that finishes up, I might pop into medical for a quick check up.”

  
Eyes narrowing, Khan looked her up and down, arms crossing over his chest. “Do you mean to say that you have not yet been seen by a doctor?”

  
“Haven’t had a chance,” she said with a shrug.

  
“How was that not your very _first_ concern upon your return?”

  
Duval cocked a brow at him, expression eloquent in its dubiousness. “I think we both know I had other things on my mind.”

  
“Unacceptable,” Khan denied, expression turning disapproving. “You will go to medical before seeing Marcus.”

  
“Unacceptable,” she parroted back at him, turning away and walking back toward her chair. “I would only be going as a formality, while the meeting with Marcus is a necessity. So it’ll be debrief first and then _maybe_ medical after.”

  
“ _Definitely_ medical after.”

  
Duval swept up her plate with her now cold toast and her cup of lukewarm coffee. “This isn’t up for discussion.”

  
“I concur,” Khan said, stalking down the length of the room and resettling himself on the floor, hauling his discarded prototype back into his lap. He looked up at her, stern and determined. “You will simply do as I say and there’s an end to it.”

  
Snorting indelicately into the coffee cup she’d lifted to her lips, Duval started walking toward the door of her room. “Yeah, feel free to hold your breath and wait for _that_ to happen,” she called over her shoulder. “I’ll be sure to put a pillow under your head when you pass out from oxygen deprivation.”

  
“That would be unnecessary,” Khan drawled, the telltale clink and clang of tools signaling that he had already gotten back to work, “as my body requires only minute quantities of oxygen to maintain consciousness.”

  
Duval paused just in front of her door, lips pursed in annoyance. “You and your genetics take all the fun out of so many of my favorite idioms.”

  
“Will you go to medical?”

  
“Are you going to leave me alone if I say no?”

  
“I will escort you there personally if you do.”

  
Huffing, Duval stepped forward, activated her door and then flounced through, turning to shoot him a glare once she was inside her room. “You win. I’ll go when I finish with Marcus.”

  
“Splendid. Do give my regards to Dr. Carlson - I find her to be surprisingly...tolerable.”

  
“You’re such a prick.”

  
He tilted his head up, eyes dancing and a smirk on his lips. “I am at that. And you would have me no different.”

  
It wasn’t a question. It didn’t need to be. He was right and they both knew it.

  
“No,” Duval said, grinning despite herself, “I don’t suppose I would.”

  
And then she turned away to get herself ready for the day, the door closing with a soft hiss behind her.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing, except for the things that belong to me. 
> 
>  
> 
> A/N: Well, my most sincere apologies for the delay in getting this chapter out. Real life didn't just get in the way, it straight out BLOCKED the way at times over the past three weeks. Car accidents (thankfully without injury), sick children, broken air conditioners (which, in Florida at this time of year, is a really BIG deal) and a host of other issues cropped up in a very small period of time and unfortunately, something had to give. But...c'est la vie. Here's another chapter done...now, on to the next!
> 
> As always, my sincere thanks for all the reviews/follows/faves/kudos...I appreciate every single one of them! And an enormously enormous shout out to my long-suffering beta, Xaraphis. You drive me insane with your tweaks, but the story is all the better for them in the end! ;)

_(Two Weeks Later)_

  
“Well?”  Duval, seated on one of the exam tables, watched Dr. Carlson like a hawk, taking in every nuance of the other woman’s expression and studiously ignoring the beeping of the scanner buzzing around her head.  “How’s it looking?  Am I good to go?”

  
Carlson, eyes on the feedback monitor in her hand, didn’t even look up.  “I don’t like to be rushed, Lieutenant.”

  
“Sorry,” Duval said, tone hovering somewhere between sincere and sarcastic as she kicked her booted feet impatiently, barely resisting the urge to shuffle uncomfortably on the table - she really _hated_ sickbay.  “I don’t mean to push, but I’m scheduled for a test range session this morning and I don’t want to miss it.”

  
Carlson paused, eyeing her sideways for a moment before dropping her eyes back to the monitor.“If that’s the case, I wonder that you decided to do this first - this could have certainly waited until you were finished.”

  
Sighing deeply, Duval rolled her eyes up toward the ceiling, vividly recalling the steely determination in a pair of too blue eyes and the stubborn pinch around the edges of perfectly bowed lips.  “No,” she said, resignation dripping from the word, “it really couldn’t.”

  
Lowering the scanner, Carlson tilted her head, observing Duval through narrowed eyes for a long, silent moment.  Duval knew that look.  Duval _hated_ that look.  That was the look that meant prying was not only imminent but unavoidable.  Once Carlson had scented a secret, the woman was like a dog with a bone.  “Anymore headaches?”

  
It absolutely was not the question she really wanted to ask; Duval could see that clearly.  However, she knew how the other woman operated.  This was her lead in...her subtle way of easing into a question and answer session that would eventually get her to what she really wanted to know.

 

“No, ma’am,” Duval assured, determined not to fall into one of the doctor’s carefully laid verbal traps by sharing more than absolutely necessary.  “Not for four days now and my light sensitivity has been back to normal for almost a week.”

  
“Good.”  Carlson set her instruments aside and took a step back.  “Dizziness?  Nausea?  How’s your appetite?”

  
“No to both the dizziness and nausea.  Appetite’s all good.”

  
Carlson was studying her now, as intently as she would a particularly interesting specimen beneath the lens of her microscope.  “Well, I’d say that settles it then.  You’re fine, Lieutenant.”  She paused, a calculated delay - the woman did like to set a scene.  “But then, you already knew that, didn’t you?”

  
There was a whole lot being asked in that one small question; far more than was apparent from the words themselves.  The Doctor knew better than that - knew _her_ better than that.  She barely shared information when directly asked, she certainly wasn’t about to start volunteering it off of a prompt as vague as that one.  Duval’s expression darkened with annoyance.  “I did.”

  
Silence.

  
Carlson stared at her, expectantly.  Duval stared right back, defiantly.

  
The Doctor broke first, huffing out a breath and crossing her arms over her chest.  “Ok, _fine_...I’ll bite.  I know you, Duval - you’d rather have your spleen gouged out with a soup spoon than voluntarily submit to an unneeded medical exam.  So why the hell are you sitting in my sickbay, wasting both of our very valuable time, when you already know perfectly well that you’re fine?”

  
Leave it to Carlson not to just let it go.  For a woman who spent a whole lot of time decrying the tittering state of the Section gossip machine, she certainly was a nosy pain in the ass.  “Because I was informed that I need official medical clearance before I will be...," she paused, the storm clouds gathering in her eyes flashing lightning for a moment, “ _permitted_ to participate in a range session.”

  
Carlson frowned, looking genuinely surprised by that admission.  “Why?  You’re not on any official medical restrictions, so official clearance should be entirely unnecessary.  Who the hell is asking for...”

  
“It doesn’t matter,” Duval interrupted, patience waning and irritation spiking.  “It doesn’t matter who’s asking for it and it doesn’t matter why.  Just give it to me so that I can get the hell out of here, please.”

  
She’d said too much - given too much away.  She knew it immediately and the certainty was confirmed when Carlson’s eyes widened with sudden realization.  Worse, chasing hard on the heels of that, the doctor’s expression shifted, turning far, _far_ too knowing for Duval’s liking.

  
“Well, isn’t that interesting...”

  
_Oh, for fuck’s sake..._

  
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Duval said airily, attempting to sound entirely unconcerned all the while knowing she was doing nothing but digging herself deeper.  She really was going to need to learn how to function in this new normal she’d thrust herself into - her lack of experience in this area was already proving an enormous liability. 

  
Carlson hummed, amused and not the least bit fooled.  “I’ll make an official notation of your clean bill of health in your medical file, Lieutenant.”  Her expression turned sly, the corner of her mouth curling up into a cheeky grin.  “You know, tangible proof, and all...just in case Commander Harrison requires more than your word on the subject.”

  
And there it was.  The truth...in all it’s embarrassing glory.  Khan was going to pay for this, the stubborn prick. 

  
Lips compressing into a thin line, Duval stared determinedly at the wall beyond the doctor’s head.  “Are we finished here then?  I think we’re finished.”  She pushed herself off the exam table and started for the door.  “Thanks _so_ much for your time, Doctor Carlson.”

  
“Oh, you’re very welcome, Lieutenant,” Carlson called at her retreating back, still grinning from ear to ear.  “Give my regards to the Commander, won’t you?  Or should that be my congratulations?  Though, knowing you as I do, perhaps I really ought to be offering my condolences.”

  
Duval kept moving, cheeks burning with mortification as she left sickbay and it’s presumptuous doctor behind.  Stalking down corridors as she made her way toward the lab, she was inwardly fuming - furious at herself for her inability to keep her habitually cool composure even under such friendly fire.  Granted, Carlson tended to be rather uncannily observant, but Duval knew that she had made the... _situation_...all too obvious with her defensiveness.

  
If she had a hope in hell of keeping this development from Marcus even temporarily, she was going to have to learn to control that instinct and she was going to have to learn to control it _fast_.  God knew when the old bastard would decide to grace them with his presence again, but she needed to be ready when he did.

  
Khan, for his part, had suggested that they not even attempt to hide it - that she should, in fact, inform the Admiral of the change in their relationship herself.  Logically, she knew it made sense.  Hiding it was going to ultimately prove impossible.  There were too many eyes and too many ears on Io, both seen and unseen.  Not to mention, she needed to make sure that, when he did find out, he found out only what she wanted him to.  He needed to believe that the attachment was entirely one-sided; that Khan was the only one whose emotions were truly involved.  With that being the case, she knew that the smart thing to do - the prudent thing to do - was to tell him herself, straight out and without delay.

  
Whether she was the one to tell him or not, it was a simple, unavoidable fact that Marcus was going to find out about the change in their relationship.  She knew that.  But it didn’t change the fact that she physically recoiled from the idea of laying it all out for Marcus’ perusal.  She could already see his face, the gleeful expression he would wear when he heard.  He would be thrilled beyond belief...he would gloat and congratulate his own stunning brilliance...he would be pleased as fucking _punch_...

  
And she would want to climb through the viewscreen and strangle him with her bare hands. 

  
This... _them_...it was still so new.  Such uncharted territory.  Even with all of her self-imposed limits, it was...

  
Well.

  
It was _wonderful_. 

  
And the very last thing that she wanted to do was share it - _any_ of it - with Marcus or anyone else.  Not so soon.  Not when she was still wrapping her head around the idea of it herself.

  
Despite her inability to handle Carlson with her usual aplomb, Duval knew that it was still there inside her somewhere.  She’d managed to find it and use it with a vengeance the one time she’d been face to face with Marcus since it all began - he’d suspected nothing and had left the next day none the wiser.  After that...

  
After that, things had gone so smoothly that she’d grown complacent.  Too complacent, if the Dr. Carlson debacle was any indication. 

  
But in the two weeks since her dramatic return to Io, life had fallen quickly and effortlessly back into the easy rhythm of before - albeit with some... _notable_ additions.  

  
That single, successful interaction with Marcus had come after that first, turbulent morning with Khan.  As she had said she would, she’d done her due diligence, meeting with the Admiral and giving him a full - _mostly_ \- debrief.  To say that he had been less than pleased with the now former Agent Allen would have been a gross understatement.  In fact, he had been on the comm to the Chief Security Officer before she’d even finished her account, ordering that Allen be prepped for removal.  He didn’t specify where to and Duval didn’t actually care enough to ask.  Frankly, she was just happy to know that the other woman would be gone by the end of the day.

  
What happened to her after that...well...that was her problem.  Not to mention entirely her own fault.  Duval wasn’t about to waste even a single shred of sympathy on the girl.

  
Vazquez, who had been granted permission to sit in on the debrief - despite Duval’s protests - had listened in silence, though Duval had seen the mounting disquiet in his face the few times she’d glanced his way.  When Marcus had made the call, he hadn’t said a word in Allen’s defense; had just sat there and listened to the Admiral give the order, hand over his mouth and looking very much like he was about to be sick.

  
Why she did it, Duval didn’t know - some lingering sense of camaraderie, she supposed - but she made no mention to the Admiral of the fact that the Facility Commander had not only been sleeping with his subordinate (a minor infraction), but that he had also been feeding her confidential, classified information (a not so minor infraction).  His real saving grace was the fact that none of his actions had, in all honesty, had any real bearing on what had occurred.  Had that been the case, she would have called him out without even a single qualm.  True, it had been at his insistence that Allen was sent with her in the first place, but if she wasn’t going to hold Marcus responsible for that, then she couldn’t very well hold Vazquez to a different standard.

  
He hadn’t known Allen’s intentions any better than Marcus had.  She knew Rafael Vazquez well enough to know that he wasn’t the kind of man who would even condone the younger woman’s actions, let alone encourage them.  So she’d kept her mouth shut on that score and kept her sights quite firmly and unwaveringly on Allen and Allen alone.

  
When, finally, Marcus had called an end to the meeting, sending Duval off with a firm grip on her shoulder and a surprisingly heartfelt speech about how happy he was that she had made it back after all, she had walked out with her head held high.  She’d passed Vazquez on the way, had looked right at him and had seen the guilt behind the beseeching look he was giving her.  She hadn’t stopped; hadn’t even paused.  Duval had simply turned her face away and walked right past him.

  
It wasn’t a matter of guilt or forgiveness.  It was a matter of trust.  They weren’t close, no matter what he did or didn’t feel for her.  However, she had always counted him as someone she could trust, at least on a professional level.  No matter what his intentions had been, he had broken that trust.  

  
While she could get past a whole lot of things...she couldn’t - _wouldn’t_ \- get past that.  Not now.  Maybe not ever.

  
From there, she had taken a quick trip to medical and gotten herself checked out by Dr. Carlson.  It was for the best all around; she had no desire to test Khan on the issue, horrifying images of him tossing her over his shoulder and hauling her bodily through the corridors to sick bay dancing through her head.  The good Doctor had dressed her wounds properly, confirmed that she _did_ , in fact, have a moderate-to-severe concussion and had then proceeded to scold her something fierce for not coming to her sooner (later, when she discussed the afternoon with Khan, she would conveniently leave _that_ detail out of the retelling).  She’d been given a supply of painkillers and strict orders not to overdo it along with a stern warning to get her ass back to sickbay immediately if any further symptoms presented.

    
After that, she’d gone back to her quarters  - Marcus, of all people, having been insistent that she take a day or two of R&R - changed back into her comfy clothes and then curled up on the couch for the rest of the day.  She had tried to read for a bit, but focusing on the text made her head hurt, so she’d given up trying and had settled instead for watching Khan work.  Of course, that had only lasted so long before she’d found herself staring longingly at the pale strip of skin at the nape of his neck, between his collar - he’d gotten dressed in her absence, unfortunately - and his hairline.  Not long after that, staring had turned to stroking and then...well...

  
They’d been able to cross the couch off the list of obliging surfaces after that.  Her chair too, but that wasn’t until much later in the day.

  
In the time between then and now, two weeks after they’d begun, they’d pretty much exhausted the list - beds included.  Twice over.  There were, she had discovered very, very quickly, a lot of extremely satisfying advantages to superhuman genetics.  Things like stamina and strength and, best of all, the lack of anything even remotely resembling the typical male refractory period.

  
Before this - before _Khan_ \- Duval had never really considered sex to be an essential part of her life.  She’d enjoyed it well enough when the rare opportunity arose, but she hadn’t gone out of her way to get it.  Now...

  
Well, now she understood just how... _addictive_...it could be with the right partner.   

  
At her insistence, they had restricted their extracurriculars to their quarters; she had been adamant from the get go that they leave their private relationship firmly behind as soon as they stepped outside that door.  Khan hadn’t even attempted to protest, though she knew that he was far less opposed to _exploration_ than she was.  But she wouldn’t budge on that rule.

  
Out there, they would maintain the purely professional association that they had enjoyed before.  Granted, there was more of a flirtatious undertone to their interactions in the lab than there had been before, but even that disappeared entirely if anyone else was present.

  
On the whole, things had been surprisingly easy.  So easy, in fact, that she had begun to wonder what, exactly, she had been so worried about.  She did still, occasionally, suffer moments of doubt; her fears were still there, buried deep.  But with every day that went past, she was finding it less and less of a challenge to subdue them.  Khan certainly helped in that capacity.  He had an almost uncanny ability to recognize those moments when they were upon her and somehow knew exactly what to say or do to help her through them.

  
It was a staggering dichotomy. 

  
To the rest of their small, contained little world, he was the same as he had ever been.  Arrogant, aloof, cold and oftentimes, downright mean.  The engineers all still hated him with a voracious, burning passion; the rest of the Io crew still gave him as wide a berth as they possibly could whenever he deigned to join her in the mess or the officer’s lounge. 

  
But with her - _to_ her - he was so very different.  He was attentive.  Considerate.  Tender.  He was a study in contrasts and Duval found herself endlessly fascinated by each newly revealed layer of him.

  
That wasn’t to say that they didn’t have their moments.  He was still him...and she was still her.  They bickered.  They sniped.  They snarked.  She’d never met anyone who could push every single one of her buttons - sometimes simultaneously - quite like him. 

  
All in all, Duval mused as she walked down the winding corridors toward the lab, she was happier than she had been in a long, long time.  It was something she was realizing more and more with every day that passed.  She was loath to admit such a thing out loud, convinced that the moment she did, it would all turn spectacularly to shit, but neither was it something she could deny to herself within the confines of her own head and heart.

  
He made her happy.

  
Four small words.  One short sentence.  And it was the biggest concept she’d ever had to wrap her head around.

  
Down the corridor ahead of her, the door to the lab opened and two figures came rushing out, one immediately after the other and both of them spitting curses over their shoulders.  Duval kept moving forward, recognizing them as two of the primary design engineers working on the Vengeance.  The moment they spotted her, they both charged toward her, expressions livid.

  
“That man is _impossible_...”

  
“...rude, arrogant son of a  bitch...”

  
“...needs a damn _muzzle_...”

  
“...tell him the world doesn’t actually revolve around _him_!”

  
Duval, who had stopped, effectively cornered by the two loudly pissed off engineers, lifted her hands in front of her, palms out in a placating gesture.  “How ‘bout we try this without talking over one another, huh?  I’m not gonna be able to help if I can’t figure out what the problem is!”

  
“ _He’s_ the problem,” the taller of the two men, a newer addition to the Section - Roberts?  Richards?  _Reynolds!_ \- snarled at her, jerking a thumb back towards the lab.  “Harrison and his colossal ego, thinking that he doesn’t have to abide by his commitments because he’s somehow better than all the rest of us!  _That’s_ the problem, Agent Duval!”

  
“He kicked us out of the lab,” the other one - Sung, a section veteran - chimed in, reaching up to adjust the glasses perched on his nose.  “Oh, I’m sorry...not _the_ lab... _his_ lab.  He kicked us out of _his_ lab and told us that he wouldn’t be as generous the next time we barged into, again, _his_ lab uninvited!”

  
Duval cocked a brow at them, mentally reviewing their schedule in her head.  “I don’t recall having scheduled a meeting with...”

  
“This wasn’t a scheduled meeting,” Sung snapped.  “We have questions about...”

  
Shaking her head, Duval pulled her arms in, crossing them over her chest.  “You know Commander Harrison’s rules...if it wasn’t scheduled, it doesn’t happen.  Sorry if that’s a bother, but it’s just the way it is.”

  
“But we just need...”

  
“Schedule a meeting,” Duval cut in, unwilling to argue the point further.  “Send me a request and I’ll get with the Commander to determine when the best time would be.  I’ll get back to you no later than end of day tomorrow with a date and time.”

  
“This is ridiculous!”

  
“We’ll go to Admiral Marcus...”

  
“...who will tell you in no uncertain terms that you’re going to have to play the Commander’s game his way whether you like it or not,” Duval said with a sigh.  “And that will come _after_ he’s ripped you a new one for bugging him with tedious bullshit in the first place.  So unless you particularly _enjoy_ being torn to shreds by ranking officers, I’d highly suggest you just let it go.  Send me a request, show up at the appointed time, get your questions answered.  Otherwise, figure it out for yourself.”

  
She pushed past them, ignoring their scandalized looks and didn’t stop until she was in the lab and the door had closed behind her.  Khan, seated at his worktable, glanced up at her, not looking even the least bit apologetic.

  
“You need not ask...I did, of course, hear every word.”

  
“I wasn’t actually going to ask.”

  
“Excellent,” he said, head tilting up to offer her a quicksilver grin that she already knew well not to trust, “then I suppose no more need be said on the subject.”

  
“You would suppose wrong, then."  Duval stalked across the room, stopping just in front of his workspace and crossing her arms over her chest.  “Couldn’t you have just given them the answers they came for?  I mean, honestly...would it kill you to be just a little bit accommodating?  I’m sure they have legitimate questions, and even you have to admit that you haven’t exactly made yourself available for consultation over the past few weeks.”

  
“I am extraordinarily busy at present with more pressing matters,” Khan dismissed.  “I refuse to waste my time in futile attempts at correcting the enduring ineptitude of lesser minds, Rebecca.  I grow weary of wading through a morass of increasingly tiresome questions - particularly as they appear to be in inexhaustible supply.”

  
“And whose fault is that?”  Duval shook her head at him, all kinds of smitten but trying like hell not to show it - recognizing her own weakness for his imperiousness was one thing; letting him know about it was something else entirely.  She hiked up one leg, half-sitting on the edge of the table and trapping several pieces of paper beneath her for no other reason than that she knew it would annoy him.  “You’re the one who insists on playing technological fire-bringer.  If you don’t want the cavemen asking questions, stop handing them lit sticks, Prometheus.”

  
Khan stopped what he was doing, eyeing her and her invasion of his workspace with an arched brow and a lift of his chin.  She had recently become acquainted with that look, having learned it quickly and well since they had become...closer.  That look was a challenge both issued and accepted.  “That was not only situationally germane, Rebecca, but genuinely clever as well.  I am impressed - the effect of my good influence upon you proves more manifest with each passing day.”

  
Oh yes, that look spoke loud and clear.  That look told her in no uncertain terms that it was time to circle the wagons, to guard her back and to be on the lookout for stray verbal missiles.  Khan was ready to play...and when he did, he played to _win_.  And judging by the cool, confident look in his eyes, he wasn’t figuring on it being much of a competition.

  
More fool him to have forgotten just how well she had come to know him.  The man presented himself as a walking puzzle - as a conundrum without an answer.  Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t nearly as enigmatic as he liked to think he was.

  
“Right... _your_ good influence.  I must have some odd form of temporary amnesia then, because I can’t for the life of me remember even one instance of you and I discussing Classical Greek mythology.”

  
He waved a hand negligently.  “It was more a general observation,” he said.  “I more meant to suggest that your wit is exponentially improved under my patiently guiding hand.”

  
“There you go, thinkin’ you’re funny,” Duval said, rolling her eyes at him and deliberately wriggling further onto the table, the crinkle and crunch of countless sheets of paper music to her ears, “when you’re so not.”

  
His left brow twitched tellingly - the only outward evidence he gave of his annoyance - but then his brows went up, the corners of his mouth turned down and he assumed a look of such patently false innocence that it nearly broke her determination not to laugh. 

  
But only nearly though; she wouldn’t let him win so easily.

  
She was fully seated on the table now, legs dangling and her rear end firmly planted atop several stacks of drawings and at least one of his many PADD’s, which was currently poking into the back of her right thigh.  It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but considering the way that left brow of his had twitched three more times in the last twenty seconds, it sure did feel good.

  
“I assure you,” he said, and there was just as much overdone sincerity there as there was on his face,  “I intended neither jest nor insult.  I was merely making an informed observation based on all available evidence.” 

  
Finally allowing herself to smile, bold as brass, Duval kept her arms tightly folded across her chest and shook her head at him.  “Well, bless your heart.  Whatever would my backwoods peasant self have become without you to free my tiny mind from the bonds of ignorance?”

  
“I shudder to think, though I suspect it would have been rife with an overabundance of hideously folksy idioms and marked by a proclivity toward heavy-handed sarcasm.”

  
He was such an unabashed prick sometimes - such a complete and total jackass - and damned if she didn’t just _love_ it.

  
There really was just so much wrong with her on so many different levels.

  
“So,” she said slowly, drawing the ‘o’ out, “were you gonna answer me sometime soon or is your plan to be as big a dick as you possibly can in the hopes that I’ll forget that I even asked you a question?”

  
“Had you asked a question?”

  
_Really?_

  
“The engineers,” she reminded him impatiently.  “Why wouldn’t you answer them?  What are you working on that’s turned you into an even bigger ass than usual?”

  
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, the mood between them shifted - more specifically, _Khan’s_ mood shifted.  She could see it in his face, the haughty humor giving way to something at once softer and far more insidious. 

  
_Changing tactics on me_ , she acknowledged, back straightening and shoulders squaring.  _You really don’t want to answer these questions do you?_

  
He should have known better than to make it so obvious.  This was as good as blood in the water to her; he was definitely hiding something...and if there was one thing that could turn her into a shark, it was the prospect of learning something that someone was actively trying to keep from her.

  
_Yeah...you go right ahead and play your games.  I know how to play too, honey...so go on and just bring it on._

  
She was ready for him.  The question was, was he ready for _her_?

  
Khan, new purpose gleaming out of those bright cerulean eyes, leaned across the narrow table, one of his hands snaking out to curve around her waist.  “You, my dear, possess a pugnacious tenacity that I - much to my dismay - find quite _unspeakably_ charming."

  
The fingers at her back drifted lower, toying with the hem of her black shirt momentarily before slipping beneath it and walking their way up to brush softly at the bare skin just over her spine.  Duval arched a brow at him, unimpressed with his choice of diversionary tactics - if he honestly thought she was some blushing maiden to be undone entirely by her lovers slightest touch, then he _really_ had another think coming.  “Do you now?” 

  
“Indeed."  His grin turned into an all out smirk, those questing fingers of his dipping just slightly beneath the waistband of her black uniform pants, his touch light enough to send shivers across her skin.  “Utterly...irresistibly... _enchanting_...”

  
For someone who had just accused her of heavy-handedness, he certainly was laying it on thick.  Too thick.  So thick that she was actually a little bit disappointed in him - she expected a better caliber of manipulation out of a man with his credentials.  Arms unfolding, she reached behind her, fingers wrapping tight around the wrist of his too-intrepid hand, blunt nails digging into his skin with the force of her grasp.

  
“If only I could say the same about you and your stunning arrogance,” Duval snarked at him, grinning impishly before yanking his hand away from her and tossing it unceremoniously into the ever shrinking empty space between them.  Noting the way he was leaning in, bringing his lips ever closer to hers, she reached up and pressed one hand against his chest, palm flat against his sternum, halting him.  “First of all, you know the rules.  There’s a time and a place, so stop pushing it.  Second, stop trying to distract me.  I asked you a question, I’d like an answer - why couldn’t you take five minutes and answer their questions?”

  
Frowning now, eyes on the arm that held him at bay, Khan dropped all pretense, the put upon expression he’d worn when she first entered the room firmly in place.  “It hardly matters, Rebecca...”

  
“Considering how hard you’re avoiding answering, I highly doubt that.”

  
“I have no qualms about answering, I simply cannot understand why you seem so very determined to make an issue where there is no issue.  I find the entire line of questioning tedious, and...”

  
“You find everything tedious," Duval shrugged, interrupting him, entirely unaffected by his snit.  “And _you’re_ the one who has turned this into an issue.  I was just trying to understand why you felt it necessary to be a raging prick to two of the most cooperative engineers that we work with.”

  
Khan turned sharply away.  “As I said when first you asked...I was busy,” he said at last, waspish now.  “Extraordinarily _busy_.”

  
Duval cocked her head to the side, gaze considering.  “Busy with what?”

  
“With the Vengeance, of course.”

  
The pause before he answered was so slight, she doubted anyone who didn’t know him well would have noticed it.  But she did know him well...and she noticed.

  
“No," she denied, confident that she was right, “you weren’t.  I don’t think it has anything to do with the Vengeance.”

  
For a long moment, Khan was silent, his eyes remained stubbornly elsewhere; looking anywhere but at her.  Then, he huffed, dropping heavily down onto the stool behind him.  “Are we not scheduled for a session at the test range this morning?”

  
“We are,” Duval agreed with a nod, not taking her eyes off his face.  “But I have no problem rescheduling, because I’m not moving from this spot until I get the answers I’ve asked for.”

  
“Must you be quite so wretchedly relentless, Rebecca?”

  
“Considering you were just waxing poetic about how charming my _pugnacious tenacity_ was...yeah; I think I really must.”

  
Khan dropped his head with a sigh, running a hand through his hair and loosing several eagerly errant strands of inky black.  “As you wish,” he growled, hand shooting out to scoop up a PADD which he then offered to her, shaking it at her gently when she didn’t immediately claim it.  “Well go on then...this is what you wanted.  _Glut_ yourself.”

  
Duval reached out, taking the PADD from him.  For a moment, she simply looked at him, reading him; reading his reactions.  It was odd.  Confusing, even.  Because despite his best efforts, she could tell that he wasn’t anywhere near as angry as he was pretending to be.  There was something else...something more like...

  
_Embarrassed_.  He looked embarrassed and thoroughly annoyed about it...but that couldn’t be right.  It sounded ridiculous even inside her own head...  
 

Tapping the screen to turn the device on, she glanced down, taking a moment to absorb what she was looking at.  When she did, she frowned, her confusion only growing.

  
“You’re designing a portable transporter,” she said, the words both a question and a statement all in one.

  
“No,” Khan snipped.  “I am designing a portable trans-warp beaming device.  The two concepts are similar, yes...but...”

  
“I really couldn’t care less about the science of it at the moment, Khan," Duval cut in, shooting him a look that he didn’t see because he _still_ refused to look at her.  “Why is it such a big secret?  I mean, I know it’s not a weapon, but I doubt Marcus will care, if _that’s_ what you’re worried about.”

  
“I am not designing it for _Marcus_.”

  
“Then what...”

  
“I am designing it for _you_ ,” he hissed, head snapping up and eyes meeting hers fiercely.  “I will build it and I will refine it and I will _perfect_ it and when I have finished doing all of that, you will never again find yourself trapped.  You will always have a way out.”  He stopped, swallowed, looked away.  “You will always have a way home.”

  
Oh.

  
_Oh_.

  
Duval, frozen, stared down at the schematic glowing up at her from the screen in her hands, a lump in her throat and what felt like a fist squeezing her heart in her chest.  She didn’t know what to say.  She didn’t know if there was anything she _should_ say.  Given her history, she’d probably just screw it all up if she did.

  
But she couldn’t just sit there and do nothing.  Not now.  Not after... _that_.

  
Slowly, gently, she set the PADD down beside her.  Planting her hands, she carefully swung her legs over to his side of the table and eased herself down to the floor.  She stepped up beside where he sat, stiff and still on his stool.  She just stood there for a moment, her heart in her throat until tentatively she reached out toward him, placing a hand on his arm.  She could feel the tension in him, could feel the muscles in his forearm shift and tighten beneath her touch.

  
Even sitting, given the height of the stool, he was still taller than she was.  So Duval pushed herself up onto her toes, leaned into him and pressed her lips to the corner of his jaw - the closest she could get to his cheek with his head turned away from her.  She let the kiss linger for a moment before pulling ever so slightly away, her lips hovering just above his skin.  “Khan?”

  
His head turned slowly toward her, his eyes meeting hers without hesitation, though she could see a shadow of uncertainty lingering in his eyes.  Taking a deep breath, Duval moved her hand from his arm, resting her palm lightly against his cheek before pressing her forehead to his, her eyes drifting shut.  “Thank you.”

  
Just that quickly, his tension eased, the arm she only just released lifting from between them to wrap around her, holding her to him.  Neither of them spoke, simply enjoyed the proximity for several long moments.  Slowly, Duval pulled back, pressed another quick kiss to his cheek, this time just at the corner of his mouth and then stepped away.  “Now...are you ready to head to the range?  Our scheduled time starts in less than fifteen minutes, so if we’re gonna go, we’d best hurry up.”

  
The shift was abrupt, but necessary.  They’d had more than enough of intense and serious; she wasn’t ready to give up the easy, relaxed air they’d cultivated since her return.  Luckily, Khan seemed to be of a similar mind.  He shook off the gravity of only moments before with an ease that she envied and sent a look of mock-severity her way.

  
“ _Are_ we prepared for the range, Rebecca?  I believe I made it clear that...”

  
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Duval waved his words away.  “I’ve got medical clearance.”  She reached down, unclipped her communicator from her side and held it out to him.  “Feel free to contact her yourself if you don’t believe me.”

  
Khan stared at her, reading her sincerity.  “Tempting - for when it comes to your good health, you are absolutely not to be trusted,” he stated before reaching out to nudge her hand back toward her.  “But I feel reasonably confident that the promised reward was attractive enough that I can take you at your word.”

  
“You promised me lots of guns to shoot,” Duval agreed.  “That is definitely the kind of incentive that gets a girl moving.”

  
Khan stood up, reaching beneath the table to haul a large bag that she hadn’t noticed earlier up and onto his shoulder.  “You will not be disappointed,” Khan assured her.  “You shall have your pick of all manner of weapons of varying sizes and strengths and you may fire them to your hearts content.”

  
Duval had been walking while he spoke, making her way across the lab as Khan followed behind.  At that, she paused, turned back to him with a grin.  “I think that might just be the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard out of your mouth.”

  
Khan, wearing the half-grin she had always secretly adored, motioned for her to precede him through the now open door.  “I think there is a very real possibility that I shall find your predilection for weaponry even more appealing than your militant persistence.”

  
The door of the lab hissed shut on the sound of Duval’s laughter as they made their way down the corridor.

 

* * *

 

  
Forty-five minutes later, Duval stood in front of a table covered in weapons with her arms crossed, bored out of her mind and swiftly running out of patience.  Khan - who was _still_ talking; who had _been_ talking since they’d walked into the room - appeared utterly oblivious to the fact that she was about two seconds away from losing her damn _mind_ as he rambled on...and on...and on about the theoretical development process, practical build detail and anticipated statistical projections of every single untested weapon.

  
As if she gave even a single, solitary _fuck_ about resonance frequency or the projected gigahertz required for specific phase variances.  She wasn’t a weapons specialist; she was a weapons _user_.  Her give a damn began and ended with one simple question...does it work?

  
And at this rate, their range time would be up before she got the chance to answer even that much. 

  
That thought made her huff, long and loud, as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, not bothering to hide her boredom.  Something about _that_ huff was apparently different enough from all of her other deliberately overwrought huffs because he finally - _finally_ \- shut up.  Glancing over at her, taking in every inch of her clearly less than pleased person, Khan turned away from where he’d been going over the various alloys utilized in the construction of the folding stock and pistol grip of a long, thin phase rifle and faced her head on.  Mirroring her pose, he crossed his arms over his chest and pinned her with a questioning look.

  
“Problem, Rebecca?”

  
“No, of course not,” she said, tone saying exactly the opposite.  “I’ve never been more fascinated in my entire life.  I weep at the beauty of all this utterly useless information you’ve been force-feeding me.  I mean, really...what’s not to love about a brain stuffed full of minutiae that’ll never prove even remotely helpful in any aspect of my life, ever.”

  
His head came up at that, chin lifting and eyes narrowing as he looked down at her, expression harsh.  “If you intend that I should regret revealing my...partialities to you, you are doing a marvelous job of it - that was excessive and  disappointingly inelegant.”

  
Duval’s brow shot up, her momentary boredom consumed by a jolt of sharp, enervating indignation.  “Right,” she scoffed, “because I measure every word I say in terms of the effect it’ll have on you.  I hate to break it to you, Khan, but this, all of this...it’s all me.  _Just_ me.  It’s got absolutely nothing to do with you at all.  I know that’s a hell of a shock to that whole I’m-the-center-of-the-universe thing you’ve got going on, but that’s your problem, not mine.”

  
“Forgive me, am I meant to find this belligerent pride in your own ridiculousness endearing?  Or are you anticipating that I shall come charging in with desperate reassurances of your brilliance and grace?  Either way, I fear you shall be horribly disappointed.”

  
Duval, smirking now, took a step toward him, arms still crossed and head tilted up to look him dead in the face.  “We’ll skip over the grace thing, because I’m not delusional enough to touch that one...but I don’t need you to tell me I’m brilliant - I _know_ I am.  And as for the rest,” her smile grew, teeth peeking out from between her lips as she gave him a knowing look, “stop pretending that you’ve somehow grown to like me _in spite_ of my quote-unquote ridiculousness, when we both know it’s a big part of why you _started_ liking me in the first place.”     

  
He was trying not to smile back; she could see it in the purse of his lips and the flare of nostrils.  “And you accuse _me_ of arrogance...”

  
Duval shook her head.  “See now, there you’re wrong.  Doubly wrong, in fact.  One - it’s not arrogance if it’s the truth.  Two -  I’ve never _accused_ you of being arrogant.  The word _accuse_ suggests the possibility of error; like maybe you might not actually _be_ arrogant and I’ve just wrongly interpreted you that way.  And I haven’t.  Because you are.”  She took another step toward him, eyes still on his and pure, impish delight glowing in her moss green eyes.  “It’s a statement of fact, not an accusation.  You’re arrogant as all hell, Khan.”

  
“Rationalization for the sake of justification,” he drawled, still resisting the smile that was pulling at his mouth.  “How droll."

  
He wasn’t wrong, so she wouldn’t deny it.  “A bit, yeah."  Duval shrugged her shoulders negligently.  “Everyone does it...but at least I do it _well_.”

  
“So you do,” he said in a rolling, spine-tingling purr, no longer fighting the smile that lit up his own eyes.  “You have an incomparable gift for credible dissimulation, Rebecca Duval - you create plausible fictions with a cool aplomb that is without parallel.  Even I can unshoulder my alleged arrogance enough to admit that you are, without question, my superior in _that_ ,” he paused, brow winging upwards mischievously and laugh-lines creasing the skin at the corners of his eyes, “if in nothing else.”

  
She thought about pretending to be offended, but really...why bother?  Stepping in until her front was flush against his, she reached out and pressed the tips of her fingers into the center of his chest, rubbing at the hard line of his sternum.  “I’ve never met anyone who had the ability to insult me so prettily before.”  She walked her fingers up his chest, swept her index finger across the line of his collarbone beneath his close-fitting black shirt, looking up at him from beneath her lashes.  “You were so nice about it that I almost don’t even care that you just basically told me that I’m completely full of shit.”

  
Khan leaned into her, one arm coming up to wrap around her waist, pulling her tight to him and smiling a true cat-that-got-the-cream grin.  “I am a man of infinite talents.”

  
“ _God_ , do I know that...” Duval breathed, arms sliding up and around his neck.  She paused, tilted her head backwards slightly as a look of genuine confusion swept over her face.  “Out of curiosity...are we fighting or flirting?  It’s hard to tell with us sometimes.”

  
Khan hummed low in his throat, amused.  “A bit of both, I should think.”  He brought his other arm around her waist, locking his arms together at the small of her back and lifting her toward him ever so slightly.  “That does seem to be our way.”

  
Still faintly frowning, Duval leaned back into his grip, allowing him to support the bulk of her weight.  “You say that like it’s no big deal, but I’m pretty sure that’s not normal.  I mean, I’m far from an expert on any of this, so...is it?”

  
“Is it what?”

  
“Is it normal?” 

  
“My dear, you are sadly mistaken if you believe that I am any more qualified than you to judge what is and is not normal in this sort of situation.  In point of fact, my previous life was hardly conducive to anything of the kind - I was, you can imagine, otherwise occupied.”

  
Duval sighed, fingers toying absently with the thick, black hair at the nape of his neck.  “We’re hopeless.”

  
Khan ducked his head, running the tip of his nose up her neck to just behind her ear, pressing a quick kiss to the soft skin there.  “Perhaps.  Though I rather think that normal for us can be whatever we determine it to be.”

  
Oh.  Well.

  
She tipped her head to the side, resting it against the side of his.

  
“I’ve never actually thought of it like that,” she said, sounding honestly surprised.  “I mean, I always assumed there had to be these hard, fast rules for how all of this was done.”  She paused, chewed her lower lip pensively for a moment.  “So me admitting that I’m never quite sure whether I’d rather tie you to my bed or blow you out of an airlock could be considered _my_ version of normal?”

  
He chuckled against her skin, the rumble of sound shuddering through her all the way down to her toes.  “Perfectly reasonable.  I am quite often torn between the opposing desires to either kiss you or kill you myself.” 

  
Duval tightened her arms around his neck, pulling him into a full embrace.  “All’s fair then.  Good.  That actually makes me feel a whole lot better, thanks.”

  
Khan snorted out another laugh.  “You are, without question, the oddest woman of my acquaintance, Rebecca...but you are welcome.” 

  
There was a long moment of silence as they continued to hold one another.  And then... 

  
“Could we, perhaps,” Khan said, pulling away from the embrace, “turn our attention back to our actual purpose for being here?  These weapons are in great need of testing, Rebecca.”

  
Duval dropped her arms from around his neck to rest on his shoulders.  “I’d say that depends on you,” she said, cocking a brow at him and pursing her lips.  “Are you gonna talk at me some more or are you actually gonna let me shoot the damn things?  Because if I have to sit through another lecture...”

  
“ _Can_ you shoot them?”  Khan shot her a look that was a little bit hesitant, a little bit reserved and yet still managed to be a whole lot doubtful.  “I mean no offense, Rebecca, but based on previous experience, I must confess that I have my doubts.”

  
He...did...not...

  
Duval, entirely offended and thoroughly insulted, snapped her arms down to knock his away.  She took a deliberate step back and away from him, all softness gone from her expression which was as stony as his had ever been.  “Explain to me how it’s in any way _my_ fault that you lacked the foresight to program that weapon to something less than you-powered.”

  
“Power levels aside...you missed the target, Rebecca.”

  
He really...really... _did_... _not_...

  
“What do you mean, _power levels aside_?  The damn thing knocked me halfway across the room.  You don’t think that probably had _something_ to do with me missing?”

  
“Perhaps it did," Khan acknowledged, his reasonable tone doing nothing for her temper.  “the _first_ time.  But when next we were here, you were nearly as ineffective and that _with_ the modified power levels."

  
“It was the next day,” Duval spat.  “My mobility was limited and my shoulder was a mess.  I wasn’t even close to being at my best.”

  
“It is my experience that quality marksmanship can overcome a great many physical obstacles when shooting extremely high-powered weapons.  If you would indulge me, I would be willing to better train you in effective shooting techniques for...”

  
Oh... _fuck_ that.

  
Duval lunged forward, swiping up the modified phase rifle he had most recently been lecturing her about.  She spun around, shouldering the weapon as she moved, found her target - she’d set a test dummy as soon as they’d walked in - and fired.  One shot.  The dummy’s head exploded, sending bits flying.

  
Without a word or a look, she walked sideways to the control panel, blindly punched in a code.

  
_Training program 52208, active_ , the tinned voice of the computer spoke into the now thick silence of the room.  _Begin sequence?_

  
Duval tucked the weapon against her securely, staring resolutely down range.  “Begin,” she barked.

  
Almost immediately, small, round targets began popping up all over the place - down from the ceiling, up from the floor, out from the walls.  Duval, without any hesitation whatsoever, systematically took out every single one of them.  Over and over and over again, she moved, aimed, fired...moved, aimed, fired until finally, the sequence ended.

  
_Fifty targets activated_ , the computer declared.  _Fifty targets neutralized.  Fifty shots fired._

  
Duval smiled, lowering the rifle to her side. 

  
One shot per target, not a single miss.

  
Well pleased with herself - the gun wasn’t bad either, but she wasn’t _about_ to admit that for the present - she turned back to Khan.  “I’m sorry...did I forget to mention that I’m a fully qualified sniper?  Best shot in the section by a mile; have been for years now.  I’ve kinda become the go to Agent for burn missions, which isn’t necessarily something to brag about, but oh well.”  She held the weapon up, inspecting it pseudo-casually.  “This thing ain’t too bad.  Bit heavy in the rear end.”  She slanted a look up at him, challenge written all over her face.  “You should really see about fixing that.”

  
She stalked back to the table, dropped the rifle back where it had been before.  Turning her back on him, she clapped her hands together, rubbing them expectantly.  “So...what next?  Any recommendations from the _expert_?”

  
His answer was all _kinds_ of satisfying.  Khan spun her around, his mouth descending on hers with more ferocity than ever.  Duval responded eagerly, attacking his lips with as much fury as passion.  He tried to pull her closer, tried to fit her against him, but she was having absolutely none of that.  Sliding a hand up into his hair, Duval gathered a fistful and _pulled_.  Hard.

  
With a growl, Khan tore his mouth away from hers, allowing her to yank his head to the side.  “Did you like that?”  She breathed the words against his ear, enjoying the shiver that went through _him_ for a change.  “You did, didn’t you?”  

  
She didn’t wait for him to answer.  She didn’t need to; she already knew that he had.  Instead, Duval lunged toward him, biting down hard on the bared column of his throat and earning another growl and an involuntary thrust of his hips against hers in the process.  She tightened her grip on his hair, forcing him to look at her.  “ _Stop_ underestimating me,” she snarled at him.  “I may not be like _you_...but I...am... _lethal_.  Don’t, even for a minute, forget that.”

  
“Rebecca...”

  
Her name was a groan as it fell from his lips; he was breathing hard (for him) and the eyes that looked up at her were blown full black.  Oh yes...he _definitely_ liked it...

  
“Tell me,” she demanded, cutting him off.  She leaned in, licking at the blush of red against the otherwise pale skin of his neck, the only evidence of her earlier bite.  “ _Assure_ me that you won’t forget.”

  
Another groan.  This one wordless; strangled.

  
“ _Say it_ ,” she snarled.

  
“I will not forget,” he said, the baritone as thin as she’d ever heard it.  “I _assure_ you, Rebecca...I will not forget.”

  
She yanked on his hair one more time, drawing him even closer.  “Good," she hissed against his ear, her voice quiet and fierce.  Then, without missing a beat, she pulled back, dropped a kiss on one of his far-too-perfect cheekbones and then released him, stepping away from him and turning back to the table.

  
“So...where were we?  Which one should I shoot next?”

  
She could hear him beside her, sucking in the largest breaths she’d ever heard him take before blowing them back out, long and slow.  Proud as hell of herself, she refused to look at him, keeping her eyes on the plethora of weaponry laid out before her.

  
“You...” Khan said after he’d gathered himself once more - God _damn_ it felt good to be on the other side of that arrangement for a change.  “You cannot be _serious_ , Rebecca.”

  
“What?  You want me to pick for myself?”

  
“Rebecca!"

  
Now, she did turn to him, an utterly unimpressed look on her face.  “Time and a place, Khan - we’ve been over this before.  We set that rule for a reason.”

  
“But...”

  
He sounded utterly _put out_...and she _loved_ it.

  
“And, no offense, but I’ve been dying to shoot these things for way too long.  I know you’ve got other things on your mind now, but I’m sorry...you’re just gonna have to wait.”  She reached out, lifting up a much smaller, more compact gun that was barely the size of her palm.  “This thing is just adorable!  I didn’t even know that it was possible for guns to be adorable...but this one so is.”

  
Silence.  Several more long, deep breaths.

  
“You, woman, simultaneously fascinate and infuriate me in ways that I did not know were possible.” 

  
Duval turned her head, meeting his eyes - still dilated, but the blue was slowly regaining its purchase over the black - and offering him a wide, true grin.  “Ditto.  Now for real, Khan...come help me.  Which one do you want me to test next?  Please say this one,” she cradled the little gun to her cheek, shooting him the closest thing to puppy dog eyes she was capable of, “please, please, please!”

  
One, last deep breath and then Khan let out a low laugh, shaking his head.  “Impossible thing,” he muttered, then reached out to pluck the weapon from her grasp.  “Have a care with this one,” he warned, “the trigger is designed to be particularly responsive...”

  
It was all surprisingly simple after that.  He explained each of his creations in turn before handing them over to her for testing and then she shot her fill before giving him her opinions and ideas for each subsequent weapon.  It was an outstanding arrangement and, though neither of them would ever admit it even under pain of death, they both quite thoroughly enjoyed themselves.  And before either of them knew it, they’d managed to work their way through the entire table.

  
Twice.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing except for the things that are mine.
> 
> A/N: A week longer getting this out than I had hoped, so again...enormous apologies! This time it was birthdays and holidays and visiting family and end of the school year stuff getting in the way. In recompense, I offer a very, very long chapter. Also, keep that M rating in mind. Really, really in mind. :)
> 
> Special thanks to my beta, Xaraphis this week...she kicked my ass during the editing process on this one, but as always, the story is far, far better for it.
> 
> Thank you so much for all the reviews/follows/favorites/kudos. I always and forever appreciate every single one.

_(3 Weeks Later)_

　

　

"I can’t believe I let you talk me into this," Duval muttered, voice deliberately hushed as she slunk along the corridor, one hand trailing along the wall to help guide her through the darkness that was broken only very occasionally by the dim glow of emergency lights. Behind her, she could _feel_ Khan’s smirk.

　

"If I recall, it was, in fact, _your_ idea."

　

"I was just thinking out loud," she hissed, rounding a corner and staring hard into the unbroken darkness ahead. "I wasn’t actually _serious_."

　

"It was an ideal solution."

　

"For _you_ maybe," Duval snipped. "For _me_ , it’s turning out to be a giant pain in..."

　

At that moment, the toe of Duval’s boot connected squarely with the slight protrusion of a doorframe and she let out a short, sharp yelp as she tumbled forward, arms flailing out to break her fall and save her from the inevitable impact.

　

The inevitable impact that never actually came...

　

Duval let out a gasping ‘oomph’, her breath rushing out of her as she was halted mid-fall by the steely strength of Khan’s arm banding tight around her middle. "Steady, Rebecca," he warned, hauling her up and back until she was clasped against his chest, her feet dangling a good two inches above the floor. "I have you," he murmured against her ear, close enough that she could feel the brush of his lips against her ear as he spoke.

　

She felt tiny in his grasp, utterly dwarfed by the size and strength of him. If he were anyone else - if their relationship were any different than it was - it could so easily have felt stifling. Suffocating.

　

But there was nothing restraining in his grasp; nothing smothering. Held there, pressed so tightly against him, she felt support. Comfort. She felt... _good_.

　

_God_...so good.

And that _so_ wasn’t how she wanted to feel at present. She was annoyed with him, she reminded herself sharply. Very, very annoyed.

　

"Thank you," she murmured back at last, fingers plucking at his sleeve impatiently, "now let me down."

　

He hummed low in his throat, reluctant and resistant, and tightened his arm a bit. "Must I?" He lifted her higher against his chest, his lips finding and teasing the skin of her neck, just beneath the line of her jaw. His free hand slithered up the side of her leg before coming to rest low on her waist, just over the flare of her hip, his fingers rubbing small, teasing circles through the fabric of her pants. "I see great... _potential_ in this position."

　

At any other time and in nearly any other situation, she would have been happy - _eager_ even - to give him the gasp and shiver that she knew he wanted. God knew it would have been easy enough to just give in and forget her irritation. But the darkness that surrounded them, paired with the soft clink of metal from the bag perched over Khan’s shoulder, reminded her all to clearly just how little she actually _wanted_ to forget. "Khan," she warned, banging her heel gently but firmly against his shin, "I’m really not in the mood. Put me down."

　

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, he lowered her to the floor and his arm dropped away from her. "You are honestly displeased with me."

　

He said it like he couldn’t even begin to fathom how such a thing was possible and Duval felt her annoyance spike accordingly. "We’ve just broken into a security cordoned section of the facility. I know perfectly well that doesn’t mean anything to _you_ , but since _I’m_ the one who’ll catch hell if we end up getting caught, I’m a little bit nervous about getting caught, ok?"

　

"Then let us take care not to get caught."

　

Duval rolled her eyes and gave a scornful huff as she turned away from him, reaching out to find the wall again. "Gee...why didn’t I think of that? How have I managed to survive for so long without you to point out the painfully obvious for me?"

　

"This is not proceeding at all as I had anticipated," Khan growled from behind her and she recognized his tone for what it was - his own, particular version of a pout. "I had intended for this to be spontaneous and enjoyable and you are doing everything imaginable to make it seem a _chore_."

　

Duval stopped, turned and glared up at him despite barely being able to see him through the blackness. "Oh, I’m _so_ sorry that I’m ruining all your carefully laid plans," she snarked. "I’m so sorry that being dragged out of my nice, comfy bed at two-thirty in the friggin’ morning to go stumbling around in the pitch black dark doesn’t _thrill_ me as much as you think it should."

　

"You are being extraordinarily unfair, Rebecca," Khan hissed at her, moving slightly toward her. "I hardly forced you to come with me."

　

"You basically told me you were doing this with or without me, which was as good as giving me no choice," she snipped back at him. "You knew perfectly well that I would never let you do this on your own."

　

"I never said anything of the sort," he argued vehemently. "I merely suggested that perhaps it would be _easier_ if I went alone!"

　

"I don’t understand why you needed to go in the first place! There is a perfectly good training facility in the gym that we could have used and it’s open as we speak. We could be in there right now, testing out those knives and _not_ wandering around in the dark!"

　

"I have no desire to deal with the prying eyes of others while working."

　

"It’s almost three in the morning! The odds of anyone actually being in the gym now are slim to none!"

　

"The possibility exists and therefore that option remains impossible."

　

Duval’s teeth ground together, irritated to no end. "And so here we are, lost in the dark and courting all kinds of trouble all because you don’t like playing with your toys in front of other kids. I mean, really...how can I possibly have _any_ problems with this scenario?"

　

There was a moment of silence as they stared at one another as best they could. Finally, Khan stepped up to her, close and lowered his head toward hers. "I understand," he said, his voice a quiet, rolling rumble that was even darker than the corridor, "that you are frustrated and are thus being deliberately goading, but I will not allow you to place the entirety of the blame for this upon my head. Despite your assertions otherwise, you are as eager as I am to put these knives to the test...and you are even less desirous of an audience while doing so than I am  you said as much yourself, so do not attempt to deny it."

　

"That doesn’t exactly translate into 'let’s go commit a little breaking and entering in the middle of the night’, now does it?"

　

"Forced entry would be entirely unnecessary if the Facility Commander possessed even a modicum of good sense."

　

"I know you think it’s stupid that this part of the station is off limits..."

　

"Because it _is_..." Khan cut in, tone acidic.

　

"...but there were legitimate reasons behind Vazquez having this section closed off. These facilities have been out of commission for years now, Khan. They’re old and nowhere near as well equipped as the newer spaces in the main part of the station - no one has used these because no one has needed them and it costs money, energy and manpower better spent elsewhere to keep them up and running. Vazquez may be an idiot on other things, but on _this_ , he was absolutely right." She turned her back on him and started forward again tentatively, hand once more trailing along the wall to guide her. "Now let’s go. I’m pretty sure we’re getting close, so there’s no point turning back now."

　

After a moment, she heard the shuffle of his step and could feel it when he fell into step behind her; heard him hitch the pack with the weapons tucked inside it up higher onto his shoulder. For several minutes, they continued on in silence, her leading hesitantly and he following with the occasional sotto voce grumble that she was gracious enough to ignore.

　

Eventually, she stumbled again, this time when the wall disappeared from beneath her fingers - the corridor giving way to a side passage; not the one they needed though, if her mental map was as accurate as she hoped it was. Duval let out a quiet stream of colorful curses as she found her balance and righted herself. "I shouldn’t have listened to you," she snarled, "I should have brought my damn palm beacon."

　

"Yes, of course," Khan snapped, brushing past her in the dark, his hand snatching up hers roughly, "because a great, bouncing beam of light would certainly not have interfered with the clandestine nature of this outing."

　

He was right and she knew it, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. "None of this would have been necessary if I’d been issued my replacement night vision specs," she grumbled. "Just had to lose the fucking things and _of course_ there would be a three month delay on the requisition. If I had those, we’d have already been there by now!"

　

She could almost imagine Khan rolling his eyes at her, but he made no comment, simply twined his fingers with hers and gave a firm tug, urging her back out into the main corridor. "Enough delay," he snapped, starting off down the corridor with her in tow, "I will lead."

　

His tone made it clear - he would brook no argument, and at first, she was grudgingly impressed. He was moving far faster than she ever would have felt comfortable attempting, given the limited visibility...but then, it occurred to her...

　

"You can see in the damn dark, can’t you?"

　

Silence for one...two...three heartbeats...

　

"Not exactly. The emergency lights, infrequent as they are, simply provide sufficient ambient light for my eyes to..."

　

"You can see in the damn dark!"

　

That had been loud. Too loud, given the circumstances, but she couldn’t help it.

　

Khan, ignoring the outburst, simply steered her effortlessly around a corner, his grip on her strong and unwavering. "Given what you know of me," he said after a moment, "this should hardly come as a surprise, Rebecca."

　

"I didn’t even think about it," Duval admitted, voice once more carefully quiet. "I probably should have but..." she paused, her fingers tightening around his, "why the hell didn’t you tell me to begin with?"

　

"If you will recall, I did offer to lead," he said and the amusement in his voice made her want to trip him, "but you were quite adamant on the subject and I have been very confidently informed that it is unwise of me to _underestimate_ you."

　

Well.

　

Son of a bitch.

　

He _would_ go there.

　

"Do you mean to tell me that you sat back and watched me fumble around in the dark like an idiot and damn near fall flat on my face because you’re a massive jackass who takes pleasure in the pain of others?"

　

"Partly, yes," Khan admitted baldly, sounding terribly pleased with himself as he drew her round a final corner, "though not entirely. I cannot speak for my proclivities toward others, but I take no joy in your pain, Rebecca. Thus why I was careful _not_ to allow you to fall." He brought them to a halt outside the door of the practice room they’d been seeking, turned and drew her to him, bringing their entwined hands up to rest on his chest, just over his heart. "I would never knowingly allow hurt to come to you, Rebecca."

　

The way he said it was so _simple -_ so straightforward; so matter of fact - that his sincerity was unmistakable. He meant it. She knew he meant it and it made it almost impossible to hold onto her irritation. Warmed and more than a little touched, she twisted her hand in his grasp until her palm was flat against his chest, his hand still atop hers. "I know," she said, matching his candor with her own, the cover of darkness making the admission easier, despite the fact that she now knew that he could see her perfectly. "Neither would I."

　

After a moment of stillness, Khan leaned forward until she could feel his breath across her face and the heat of his skin against her own. She instinctively tilted her head up toward him, eyes barely able to make out the familiar planes of his face through the blanket of blackness between them. At the first, tentative touch of his lips to hers, Duval’s breath caught in her throat, her heart thumping hard against her chest. He held there, neither pulling away nor deepening the kiss, waiting.

　

Waiting for her.

　

Eyes open and brows furrowed as she struggled against a swell of truly inconvenient _feeling_ , Duval’s entire body went stiff. There was passion in everything that he did, but there was no blatant invitation in this kiss. This kiss was a wordless conversation; an asking and telling that she was in no way prepared to engage in with him.

　

Lust was one thing. But this...this was something else entirely...

　

She wasn’t supposed to want _this_. She shouldn’t _let_ herself want it.

　

Duval let out a pained whine as she fought against the rising tide of all those unwanted emotions. Just as she was about to pull away from him - from everything that she knew she couldn’t ever fully have - he brought his free hand up to her face, brushing up the line of her jaw and cupping the curve of her cheek in his palm. At the same time, he leaned further into her, his mouth sliding more firmly against hers, tempting her with the barest sweep of his tongue against her lips.

　

And suddenly...shudderingly...every single one of her hastily constructed defenses crumbled; buckled beneath the sheer magnitude of _him_.

　

Eyes rolling shut, she let herself fall into the kiss; into the leap and throb of her heart, into the twist and flip of her stomach and the pulse and spark of her nerves. He licked at the seam of her lips once, twice and then once more, coaxing her lips apart with so much patient gentleness that it stole her breath away. The hand that still rested over his heart pressed even more firmly against him, her fingers splayed wide as she reveled in the feel of the thudding rhythm beating against her palm.

　

For several long, glorious seconds, they stayed that way, locked together in a silent communion that went far beyond their typically breathtaking passion. But all too soon, her brain caught up with her heart and all of her fears came charging back. Gasping, she tore herself away from him; from his lips and his hands, from his lingering touches and his soul-searing kisses.

　

"We can’t do this here," she breathed in a rush, backing away until her back hit the wall behind her. "It’s not..."

　

"...the time or the place," Khan finished for her, the words sharp, his tone tight with frustration. "Yes, I _know_."

　

Duval’s breath hitched and her stomach gave a lurch at the sound of his dissatisfaction. A lurch that was repeated sickeningly a moment later when he brushed past her without a word, moving to the control panel on the other side of the door. Biting at her lip pensively, Duval listened to the sounds of his fingers punching in the override code that would allow him to access the main station systems from this particular workstation - a ghost code that he absolutely was not supposed to know but did anyway thanks to his rather impressive hacking skills.

　

A moment later, the door between them slid open, the sound rolling like thunder in the silence around them. Then, after a few more taps of Khan’s fingers on the controls, the power within the room flicked on, spilling light out into the corridor and giving Duval her first good look at him since they had left their quarters.

　

His expression was stony, tense; there was a fierce furrow between his brows and it took every ounce of self-control she possessed not to reach up and smooth that angry line away with the pad of her thumb. Instead, she looked away from him and pushed away from the wall, walking into the room with her head up, knowing he would follow as she moved further inside.

　

This was the oldest part of Io. Once upon a time, this corridor and all the rooms off of it had comprised an agent training facility, installed at the very beginning when the Section was younger and less far-reaching. The original gym was just down the hall, half the size and nowhere near as well equipped as the newer version she was used to. This particular room had been used as a hand-to-hand combat practice room; evidence of which remained in the form of racks of protective gear along the walls and a whole line of practice figures lined up across the back of the room. The floor was covered with training mats that had definitely seen better days, torn and ragged in some spots, flat and trampled in others.

　

It wasn’t a big room; nothing compared to what they could have utilized elsewhere on board  but it would do well enough.

　

She turned to express that opinion to Khan but stopped short, the words dying on her lips as he stalked past her, his demeanor screaming ‘stay away’ in a way that it hadn’t done in a long time. With only the most perfunctory glance her way, his eyes sliding over her like he didn’t even see her, Khan moved across the room to the row of benches that lined the mat just in front of where the safety gear was stowed. He dropped the pack atop the slim, metal seat, whipping it open with sharp, carefully controlled movements.

　

_Look at him, already gettin’ tired of you_ , a dark voice whispered in her mind - a voice that sounded so much like her grandfather that it sent a shiver of unease down her spine. _Gettin’ tired of all your bullshit._

　

Swallowing hard, Duval’s eyes followed his every movement as she fought to banish that hated and hateful voice, struggling to ignore the way her stomach was twisting and turning into ever more intricate knots. She wanted to speak; was desperate to break the heavy silence that had fallen between them...but she had no idea what to say.

　

_Why bother tryin’?_ That voice again, sounding belligerent and spiteful and so damn _him_ that it made the muscles across her back twitch in remembrance. _Anything you say won’t ever be good enough. Anything you do won’t ever be good enough._

　

_You won’t ever be good enough._

　

Sucking in a breath, trying so _hard_ not to let all those horrible insecurities show, Duval spun away from him, walking to the other side of the room. She needed to do something, to focus on something besides her own traitorous thoughts, so she went straight for the practice dummies. She gave them each a quick look over before picking the two that looked to be in the best shape, dragging them out onto opposite sides of the mat.

 

"You believe that I am angry."

　

She paused with her arms wrapped around the waist of the dummy that she was wrestling into place. "I _know_ you’re angry." She jerked the figure forward a few more inches. "There’s no _believe_ about it."

　

"You believe that I am angry with _you_."

　

Shrugging, she moved across the mat to the other dummy, shifting it properly into place. "I’m the only one here. Seems a safe assumption to make."

　

"I am not angry with you, Rebecca."

　

She gave the dummy one final tug. "You are and that’s fine. You’re allowed to be."

　

"Rebecca."

　

Duval stopped, straightened, her arms falling to her sides. She stared straight ahead, fighting very hard not to bend to him; caught, as she always was, by the combination of command and entreaty in his voice. "What?"

　

"I have no desire to argue with you."

　

"And I don’t want to argue with you either," she responded, forcing herself to turn toward him though she met his eyes only briefly, not wanting to know what she would see in his eyes at that moment. Deciding to try and lighten the mood, to shift their course back into smoother waters - this needed to just go away; she wanted this whole thing to just go away - she offered him a tentative smile, making herself meet his eyes. "But, y’know, we do it so well, it would be a shame to waste all that talent."

　

He was watching her closely, head tilted and eyes slightly narrowed as he read every nuance of her expression and body language. Duval considered putting on an air of artless innocence, but doubted she would be able to do so convincingly. She rolled her eyes heavenward, sullen in her resignation.

　

"Please, Khan? Let’s just..." she stopped, sighed and gave another almost desolate shrug. "Can we just let it go? Please?"

　

And still he watched her, eyes sharp and diamond-bright as they cut into her, assessing and weighing all of the details that she knew she was doing a piss-poor job of concealing. She didn’t doubt that he could see right through her at that moment, her defenses brought low - she was so tired; so tired of feeling like this, of being so afraid of her own emotions that she couldn’t enjoy the best bits of happiness life had ever offered her.

　

For once, she hoped that she really _was_ the open book that she so often felt like with him. As he observed her now, Duval hoped and prayed that he could see it, all of it, all over her. That he could read how she felt in the slump of her shoulders and the wistful droop of her wilted smile.

 

Finally, after what felt like hours, Khan’s expression changed, shifted ever so slightly. The look in his eyes, so hard and cutting before, softened and the corner of his lips pulled up into an oddly gentle half-smile. Saying everything without saying anything at all, he reached down to the bench, grabbing up one of the long, curving and truly wicked looking knives which were the purpose for this excursion in the first place. Gripping it by the blade, he extended the hilt toward her, offering her the knife with a regal grace that made her breath catch in her throat. "First throw to you, I think."

　

Duval didn’t hesitate in the slightest, not willing to give him even a moment to rethink the situation. She walked over to him, stopping just within arms reach and accepted the knife into her hand as the peace offering it was clearly meant to be. Wrapping her fingers around the unadorned hilt, she twirled the blade experimentally; measured it, took note of the heft and feel of it. "Feels nicely balanced," she commented. "Did you design it to be thrown blade first or handle first or does it matter?"

　

He had not attempted to cross the few feet that remained between them, standing his ground instead with his arms held behind his back stiffly. "I had intended that to be left entirely up to the thrower," he inclined his head toward her, "so I invite you to do as you will, Rebecca."

　

Her heart sank, despite the softness and the warmth of his words. Things still were not right. He was trying, she knew he was. But things were still not right.

　

_You’re here to test these knives_ , she told herself firmly. _So test the damn knives. The sooner you’re done, the sooner you can go back to bed and pretend this miserable night never even happened._

　

_That_ voice had been entirely her own, which was a hell of a relief. It took the edge off, at least...allowed her to take a deep, cleansing breath and escape from the shadow of that _other_ voice for the time being. Turning toward the dummy closest to where she was standing - she might have been a crack shot with a gun, but she wasn’t even remotely as gifted with knives - Duval braced herself and adjusted her grip.

　

"I’ve never done much knife throwing," she admitted as she took aim, having decided to throw blade-first. "Honestly, I haven’t done much fighting with knives period. They’re a bit antiquated for most people nowadays. Like I told you earlier, I’m probably not the best person to help you test these." She pulled her arm back and brought it forward hard, releasing the knife and watching it tumble through the air to bounce ineffectually off the chest of the dummy. Huffing, Duval turned to look at Khan, gesturing in annoyance at the intact dummy and the fallen blade. "Exhibit A."

　

"Admittedly," Khan began, "there is little call for throwing knives when one is in the heat of battle. Once you’ve thrown your weapon, you are without your weapon and thus it becomes a last resort rather than a primary defense. However, it is an impressive talent to possess, if nothing else." He looked as if he wanted to move toward her, but stopped himself, holding fast where he was. "I can teach you, if you’d like."

　

This time, it was herself she didn’t let think. Duval walked over to him, right in front of him, and turned to face the dummies, her arms held out to the sides. "I’m yours," she quipped, turning to toss him a grin over her shoulder, "teach me."

　

To her very great relief, Khan’s lips bent into an answering grin and a little more of the tension bled out of the air between them. "If only you could be as biddable in all areas."

　

Duval turned her head back around, scoffing audibly at that. "Please...if I were, you’d have lost interest in me months ago."

　

"True," he agreed as he sauntered across the room to retrieve the blade she had thrown so poorly, "but one can, on occasion, dream, can he not?" Then, almost before she realized he had moved again, he was right there behind her, his chest pressed to her back, his arms coming around her and bringing the knife up between them. "Now, observe my motions; my movements." He positioned the knife in his hand. "Grip the handle just as you did before - your form there, at least, was surprisingly adequate."

　

"Slow down now," she drawled. "I’m not sure I can handle that much praise all at once."

　

"Then you will be happy to learn that absolutely everything that you did was abysmally incorrect."

　

Duval rolled her eyes. "Oh yeah...that’s much better."

　

"Focus now, Rebecca, if you please."

　

A sigh. "Fine. Sorry."

　

It was probably for the best that she concentrate on the impromptu lesson anyway. She needed to think about something else. _Anything_ else. And if there was anything that was guaranteed to draw her attention, it was the man behind her. Khan was still talking, the peaks and valleys of his tone creating a dulcet symphony in her ear, the feel of him a hard counterpoint at her back; it wasn’t long before the combination of the two began to pique her interest in a whole other way.

　

_Focus_ , she reminded herself sharply. _Focus, focus, focus._

　

"...draw your arm back, keep the angle tight, and then... _release_."

　

The blade flew out of his hand, but Duval didn’t watch it fly. Her attention instead captured by the bend and flex of his fingers, the play of the muscles in the back of his hand and beneath the sleeve of his shirt. He was... _God,_ he was so beautiful to look at. All of him. Every single part, right down to the smallest, least significant bit of him. She finally looked up, tearing her eyes from him to note the way the blade had slammed squarely into the head of the dummy; the way the entire dummy swayed on its base, still reeling from the sheer _force_ of his throw.

　

This hadn’t been her best idea.

　

Seriously...how she had ever thought that being this close to him while watching him be... _him_...would help her pay attention to anything other than him?

　

The scrape of the second blade across the metal of the bench behind them snatched her attention. Khan brought that blade up in front of her as well, the same way he had the other one, guiding her fingers into place and talking all the while. Duval, still reeling inwardly, simply swallowed hard and tried very, _very_ hard to keep her mind on what she was doing.

　

She followed his directions as best she could, attempted to learn the proper way to hold the knife, how best to stand, the easiest method for aiming...but her mind was even more decidedly elsewhere than it had been before. Her mind drifted back to his earlier words, replaying them, for some unknown reason, on an infuriating loop. There had been something in his voice before, something just a little bit dark when he had joked about her being...biddable. That something, whatever it may have been, niggled at her; the remembrance of it alone sent a rush of warmth through her veins and a spark along her nerves.

　

She could feel the heat of him all along her back, from calf to shoulder; the hard press of his thighs and the corded strength of his arms and it gave her _ideas_. _Lots_ of ideas.

　

All _kinds_ of ideas.

　

"Rebecca? Are you paying any attention to me at all?"

　

Oh, she most certainly was - just not in the way he meant. Blinking quickly, she shook her head slightly and tried to focus. "Sorry," she rasped, her voice too rough for her to pretend her thoughts had been anywhere near pure, "yes...paying attention. I’m paying attention, I promise."

　

There was nothing for a moment, just silence and stillness, and then, with a shuddering inhale, Khan dropped his hands to her waist, pulling her tight against him. "As you should," he growled against her ear, "else you shall face the consequences. I do not offer my instruction lightly, Rebecca Duval."

　

"I’m...I’m sorry," she repeated, yearning and ragged and panting.

　

Khan, clearly enjoying this as wholeheartedly as she was if the now quite obvious hardness at her lower back was any indication, brought one hand up to grasp the blade in her hand, covering her fingers with his own. " _Are_ you?" He breathed the words against her ear, his tongue snaking out to flick against the lobe. "Are you truly contrite, my wicked, wicked girl?"

　

The ideas came racing back then, flooding her mind and making her groan. " _God_ , no," she moaned and whirled around in his arms, pressing up on her toes to nip at his lips, "not at all," she dropped the hand not holding a knife to scratch at his thigh through the slick fabric of his section-issue pants, "not even a little bit..."

　

There was no hesitation. As soon as the words left her lips, Khan tore the knife from her grasp and tossed it to the ground and the hand that had been resting at her hip came up to grab tight to the messy bun at the back of her head. He yanked hard enough on her hair that she was forced to tilt her head back. Duval let out a gasp, pure pleasure exploding along every nerve in her scalp.

　

"Mmmm," Khan purred, leaning down to lick up the exposed column of her throat, "you _liked_ that."

　

Duval, all rational thought buried deep beneath the sheer weight of her desire, drug her fingers across his thigh and began to rub them teasingly over the rock-hard length of him through his pants. "I like this more," she sighed, grinning up at him and thrilling at the way Khan bucked into her hand; at the groan that wrenched from his throat. She brought her other hand down to the fastenings of his pants, working them as quickly and efficiently as she could.

　

"I’m not sorry," she breathed, voice pitched low, suggestive, "but I want to make it up to you anyway..."

　

She managed to get his pants open and pushed them down, a wicked grin on her face as she dropped to her knees.

　

Khan actually gasped - they hadn‘t done this before; not properly, at least _._ He was too impatient by half and had never allowed her the time to really... _explore_. Well pleased, Duval shoved the bottom of his shirt up to get it out of the way but Khan, impatient to be rid of the impediment, simply tore it up and over his head, flinging it away recklessly. Grinning in pure, feminine satisfaction at his breathless zeal, Duval tugged his pants down over his hips just enough to free his straining erection.

　

Taking him firmly in hand, she leaned forward, swirling the tip of her tongue around the head before tracing down the length of him and then back up again. Wetting her lips, eager for this in a way she never had been the few times she had attempted it before, with other, lesser men - eager for it now because it was _him_ and that made all the difference - she took him into her mouth slowly, deeply, until her lips met her hand where it still grasped him. She flattened her tongue, rubbing it against the underside of his shaft before pulling up, her hand chasing after her mouth, the two working in combination to stroke him fully.

　

She could feel his fingers in her hair once more, tearing out the tie, letting the chestnut tresses tumble down to frame her face as her mouth worked him with greedy, grasping strokes. He let out a strangled sound like she had never heard from him before and his hand dug into her hair at the back of her head, his hips snapping up and thrusting himself into her mouth and hand almost violently.

　

Duval grinned around him, obliging him and taking him in as deep as she could before pulling back. Again, as soon as she had released all of him but the head, he thrust forward again, even harder this time. In the past, she had despised it when the few men who had received this particular attention from her had taken it upon themselves to do that. But now...with him...

　

She didn’t just like it. She _wanted_ it.

　

She wanted _more_ of it.

　

Pulling away completely for a moment, she looked up at him, pupils completely blown and breath coming in fits and starts. "Don’t hold back," she said in a rush, embarrassed but too turned on to let that stop her. "You can...as hard as you want...however you want," she leaned forward, eyes still on his and gave him a teasing lick, "just...don’t hold back."

　

Khan was looking down at her, his eyes wide and molten, the blue that remained around the black of his pupils almost blinding in its intensity. He reached down with his other hand, ran the pads of his fingers over her cheek before brushing them across her lips. "You cannot..."

　

"I can," she cut in, insistent. "I _do_."

　

"Rebecca..."

　

" _Don’t hold back_ ," she repeated once more before dropping her eyes and taking him once more into her mouth. She positioned her hand as it had been before at the base of him and slid the other one around his waist, her palm cupping the curve of his ass and urging him on with a light push.

　

As if that was all he had needed, Khan gave a low growl, his hand gripping her head tight before he began to thrust hard into the warm, wet cavern of her mouth. Duval answered with a moan of her own, her mouth opening wider, her throat relaxing, allowing him further, deeper and his thrusts stuttered for a moment in surprise before speeding up again.

　

Soon, he was fucking her mouth with abandon, both hands now buried in her hair, fingers twined tight into the now thoroughly disheveled locks. Duval, reveling in it, drowning in sensation, just held on tighter, clinging to him, the want sitting low and heavy in her belly, pulsing down to her center with every growl and groan that slipped from between his lips. She pressed her legs together, thighs sliding against each other as she unconsciously strained toward friction of some kind, any kind...

　

"Touch yourself."

　

The snarled command caught her off guard and her eyes flew open - when had she closed them? - and sought Khan’s, just barely able to meet his eyes without moving her head...and she wasn’t about to move her head. Khan’s face was flushed, that untamed fringe of his spilling across his forehead and into his eyes. He licked his lips as she watched, his mouth hanging partly open and his breath coming quick and rough from between them.

　

"Do as I say," he ground out, tossing his head to flip the hair out of his eyes. "Do...as you...are _told_ , Rebecca."

　

She almost lost her balance, so quick did she move to comply with his order. Keeping one hand tightly wrapped around his length, Duval tore her other hand away from his ass, bringing it down between her legs and pressing against the seam of her pants, just over her center.

　

That one touch...that tiny bit of pressure...was all it took. Her orgasm ripped through her, sending spikes of white-hot pleasure through her entire body. She moaned and gasped around him, the sound muffled but still strangely erotic. When it had passed, she nearly fell over, the muscles in her legs trembling from the effort of staying upright. She pulled her hand away from herself and threw it out toward him, fingers scrabbling for purchase in the stiff, black cloth over his thighs.

　

The next moment, Khan let out a guttural groan and stepped away from her, his desire nowhere near sated though he slipped from between her lips. She looked up at him from the floor, a look of disappointed confusion on her face.

　

"What...?"

　

"Not like that," he hissed, dropping to a crouch in front of her, reaching for the hem of her shirt. He ripped it off her with a growl, then lunged for her mouth, swallowing her gasp as they fell backwards onto the mat. Tearing his mouth from hers, he pushed back onto his knees, hands going immediately to her waist and dragging her pants and underwear roughly down her legs. As soon as he had tossed them away, he flipped her onto her stomach and then grabbed hold of her hips, hauling her up onto her hands and knees, gripping with bruising force as he positioned himself at her entrance. "Like _this_ ," he growled and then he yanked her backwards hard, impaling her so fiercely that her arms collapsed beneath her, sending her upper body crashing to the mat and wringing a high, yelping wail from her throat.

　

After a few more slow but viciously powerful thrusts that forced her further into the mat and left her panting and begging for more, Khan bent himself over her back, nipping and licking at her neck as his fingers twined into her hair, giving a demanding tug that tore another moan from her lips. "Up," he commanded and the unsteadiness in his voice sent a shiver through her. She obeyed without thought, without question, pushing herself back up, hands flat on the mat and arms fully extended. He leaned back again, his hand tightening in her hair as he pulled her head back, sharp and hard; his other hand stayed at her waist, fingers pressing stark white circles into her already pale skin, anchoring him.

　

Then he was moving, hips snapping forward, pounding into her hard and fast, his grip pulling tighter and tighter on her hair. With every thrust, Duval grew more and more frantic, her keening, gasping moans growing ever louder and joining with his own snarls and the sharp slap of her skin on his to create a deliciously debauched chorus of sound. After a few more moments of that punishing rhythm, Khan dropped his hand from her hip and reached around to her front, seeking and finding her clit with the ease of weeks of practice. A few strokes was all it took before her second orgasm erupted through her body and drawing wanton, wrenching wails from Duval’s burning throat.

　

Khan followed only a bare moment later with a ragged, raging _howl_ , slamming into her so hard that he knocked her arms from beneath her, her face smacking down hard against the mat beneath them and his body collapsing atop hers.

　

Duval, her knees still tucked under her and her cheek resting on the mat, felt him pull up and away from her, could hear him shuffling around behind her. She knew she should get up, but she couldn’t bring herself to actually move. Then, suddenly, the problem was solved for her as she was lifted, turned and then settled into the warm, entirely welcome strength of Khan’s lap. She didn’t question it, didn’t fight it...just burrowed into him, curling herself further into his embrace, rubbing her cheek against his chest with unabashed affection - shoulds and should nots be damned.

　

Eyes closed and blissfully drifting, Duval could nevertheless feel a tension in him that she didn’t care for at all. "What’s wrong?"

　

He sighed, deeply. Regretfully. His fingers caressed down the side of her face, cradling her jaw, his thumb rubbing at her cheek gently. "Did I hurt you?"

　

Basking in his touch, Duval gave a little snuffling snort of laughter. "Do you ever?"

　

"Rebecca."

　

She sighed at the concern in his voice and rolled her head up, looking up at him with what she thought might turn out to be a permanent grin on her face. "I’m _fine_ ," she insisted. "Better than fine, really. So much better that it might be more accurate to say that I’m _fantastic,_ so stop worrying. How are _you_ feeling?"

　

He chuckled, his chest vibrating beneath her cheek. "That, Rebecca, is a truly ridiculous question."

　

Her grin got wider. "Guess we should both stop being stupid then and just enjoy the afterglow, hmm?"

　

Khan continued to absently pet her cheek. Then, he gave a short, sharp bark of laughter and tipped his head forward, resting his lips against the top of her head. "You are...so much more than I could have ever imagined, Rebecca. You _astound_ me. And once we are finished here," he said, voice dropping, "I will take great pleasure in showing you just how much."

　

_That_ caught her attention. Duval’s eyes popped open and she pulled back just far enough to look up at him. "I think I like the sound of that."

　

"I think you will like a great deal more than just the sound of it."

　

A shiver ran through her, desire already stirring its lazy head. "I don’t need to learn how to throw knives," she said emphatically. "Totally useless. So with that out of the equation, how long will it take you to test these stupid things to your satisfaction?"

　

Khan, eyes never leaving hers, reached out, drawing the now long discarded blade into his hand. Not shifting his position at all, he turned his head, caught sight of the dummy on the far side of the room and let the knife fly. It rotated, blade over hilt, in a perfect and deadly arc before burying, to the hilt, in the neck of the dummy. "That’s both knives thrown. I am satisfied."

 

Duval, eyes alight, grinned at him. "Works for me. Now let’s pack up and get the hell out of here."

　

A few minutes later, they were dressed, the knives were stowed, the room was locked back up and she was being dragged along through the dark behind Khan, both of them laughing.

　

Both of them dangerously... _happy_.

 

* * *

　

A day and a half later, Duval was seated at a table in the mess, picking her way through a plate of synthesized fries and happily immersed in her battered old copy of _Persuasion_ , the well-worn cover crumbling at the edges and the pages yellow and brittle with age. She had been informed, on more than one occasion and by more than one fellow 'collector’, that such books were not meant for reading - they were meant to be sealed up and locked away behind glass cabinets and put on display for posterity.

　

But she could never bring herself to do such a thing to a book. As far as she was concerned, books were meant to be read, not revered. She wasn’t a collector and she certainly wasn’t a connoisseur and she would read her books until they fell to pieces between her fingers.

　

Reaching out blindly, she pinched a fry between her thumb and forefinger, drug it through the large dollop of mustard half smeared across her plate and popped it in her mouth. Never taking her eyes off her book, she wiped her fingers on the napkin beside her plate - deliberately not in her lap; she’d spent too many years being force-fed correct table manners not to take admittedly childish glee in ignoring most of what she’d learned - and then reached up to turn another page.

　

"Careful," a familiar though recently absent voice warned from above, "you’ll ruin your book."

　

Duval stopped, glanced over at the hand approaching her book and noted the smudge of yellow she’d missed on the side of her index finger. Swallowing down the bite in her mouth, she lifted her finger to her lips and sucked it clean as she lowered her book to the table. Looking up, she met the eyes of her visitor, pulling her finger away from her lips with a wet pop. "Thanks," she said, though there was very little actual gratitude in the word.

　

"You’re welcome," Rafael Vazquez intoned gravely, his face wan and his expression worn. He gestured to the chair across from her. "May I?"

　

She sat back in her seat, arms instinctively crossing over her chest. "The sooner you sit, the sooner you’ll talk and the sooner you talk, the sooner you can leave, so by all means," she nodded tersely toward the empty chair, "sit."

　

He flinched at that, a small twitch of the muscles around his eyes, but made no comment as he pulled the chair out and sat himself down in it. Squaring his shoulders, he placed his hands on the table top and looked her square in the eye. "I have...there’s a reason I’m here, now, but..." he swallowed, huffed. "Before I...I want to...you need to know, Becca..."

　

"Don’t call me that," Duval cut in, expression bland but eyes blazing. "I hated that nickname at the Academy, I hated it all through Section training and I still hate it now. I dealt with it before because I was making an effort to be polite, but since I don’t give even the tiniest fuck about that anymore, I won’t deal with it any longer. Call me Lieutenant, call me Duval...but don’t ever call me _Becca_ again."

　

Vazquez stared at her, wide-eyed and tense, for a long moment before dropping his gaze to the table, his fingers picking absently at the surface. "Right," he said at length, "of course. _Lieutenant_."

　

Duval raised an eyebrow at him, annoyed by his hesitance and the delay it inevitably created. "You were saying?"

　

He didn’t look up, just kept swatting at invisible detritus. "I didn’t expect to find you on your own," he said to her distorted reflection in the shiny steel of the table top. "You’re never alone these days."

　

"If that’s a roundabout way of asking whether Commander Harrison might pop up at any moment, you can relax. Amazingly enough, he’s asleep. He doesn’t do it often, so I do my best to leave him to it when he does."

　

"You and the Commander," Vazquez began, the words so strained that it was a wonder he was able to get them out, "have gotten very...close. Lately."

　

Duval’s expression darkened, anger sparking at the suggestion in his tone. "That is none of your goddamned business, _Commander_."

　

"No, it’s not," he agreed, wholeheartedly. "It’s no one’s business. Or at least," and now he looked up at her again, the look in his eyes so pointed - so _knowing -_ that it momentarily threw her, "it’s not _supposed_ to be."

　

Oh...God...

　

Duval’s stomach plummeted and her breath hitched in her throat. He knew. And if _he_ knew, then that meant that Marcusknew. And if _Marcus_ knew...

　

The horror she was feeling must have showed on her face because Vazquez gave a short, tight nod and then looked back down at the table. "The Admiral is waiting to speak to you. Comm Room 8. Your security code is the same."

　

She shoved her chair away from the table violently, stumbling up and out of it and nearly falling in the process. Without another word to or look at Vazquez, she sped out of the mess, very nearly running.

　

He was going to be furious. He was going to be absolutely _livid_ that she hadn’t told him straight away. The trick for her was going to be trying to work the situation so that she appeared to have a very good reason for not informing him of the change in their relationship immediately. In the back of her mind, knowing that Marcus would find out eventually, she had been planning for exactly this moment, plotting out how she would talk her way around his anger.

　

She knew she could do it. She could talk her way around anything.

　

Skidding to a stop at the door of Comm Room 8, she reached for the console, fingers hovering, unease twisting in her gut. Unease born of a truth she could no longer afford to deny.

　

It wasn’t going to be easy, despite her determination to the contrary. She needed to convince Marcus that her relationship with Khan was nothing more than a means to an end. Excellent liar, she might well be...but this...this was something else entirely. Her experience with romantic relationships of any sort at all was limited. So limited that she was not gifted with the ability to marginalize even the least important of them.

　

Even had there been nothing besides lust between she and Khan, Duval wasn’t sure it would have made the forthcoming conversation any easier at all. But the fact that there was so much more than lust alone...

　

It was going to take every ounce of self-control she possessed, every shred of acting ability that she had cultivated, to make Marcus believe that she didn’t care about Khan in the slightest.

　

_Best to just do it,_ she told herself, resigned. _Get it over with._

　

Sucking in a deep, fortifying breath, Duval punched in the clearance code and, as soon as the door slid open, she stepped inside. The door hissed shut behind her almost immediately but she barely noticed, her eyes caught by the blazing, cobalt blue of Marcus’ gaze as it glared out at her from the viewscreen. Swallowing hard, Duval fought to find her voice.

　

"Sir...," she began, "I can explain."

　

"Sit down and shut up, Duval," Marcus barked, glowering at her. "I see Vazquez still hasn’t managed to figure out what the fuck _discretion_ is, but never mind. I’ll deal with him later."

　

Doing as she was told, she moved across the small room to drop bonelessly into the chair in front of the console. "Admiral..."

　

The anger in his eyes flared, fanned higher and higher. "I told you to shut up and I meant it, Duval."

　

"But, _Sir_...please..."

　

Marcus reached out, finger jabbing hard onto something on his control console and immediately, a second, smaller screen burst into view in the corner of the larger viewscreen. Duval’s stomach did a somersault and her hands tightened on the arms of the chair, knuckles showing white beneath her skin. It was security footage from the old practice room...and she and Khan were playing the starring roles.

　

She hadn’t even thought about it...had assumed that the security systems would be out of commission along with the rest of that wing. How had she been so irresponsible? How had it not even occurred to her? They’d been so careful...she’d made sure they were so careful...and then they’d thrown it all away in one moment of thoughtlessness...

　

Clearly, the video had been cued up beforehand because it had begun in the very middle of their...activities. Duval watched with wide, horrified eyes as Khan slammed into her from behind, feeling her face burn red hot at the sound of flesh slapping flesh, of Khan’s animalistic growls and her own gasping wails. Finally, she had to look away, humiliated like she had never been before.

　

And _angry_. Enormously...incandescently...angry...

　

"I can explain, Sir," she ground out, trying desperately to keep that anger in check. The last thing she needed to do was loose her temper with Marcus.

　

"Do you think I _need_ an explanation?" Marcus all out shouted the words, looking as livid as she felt. Suddenly, the sound on the video was cranked all the way up, the sounds of their combined pleasure screaming out from the small, damning square of footage. "Do you honestly think I need you to _explain_ this to me, Duval?"

　

Tears pricked her eyes, but Duval blinked them away, ignoring them - they would do her absolutely no good with Marcus. Gathering herself, burying her mortification deep below the ire burning hot and high in her chest, she squared her jaw and lifted her eyes back the Admiral’s. "I understand that you’re angry. I should have told you about the developments in my relationship with Khan from the get go," she said, tone only slightly biting, "but I would greatly appreciate it if you could turn that off, please, Sir. Now."

　

Marcus reared back in his chair, brow arched and expression thunderous. "You really think this is the time to be making _demands_ , Duval? This is the second time you’ve committed gross insubordination for the sake of that science project - I should be pulling your ass from Io permanently for this! You’re goddamn lucky I’m not on my way out there with a security detail as we speak!"

　

Her fury spiked, spiraling higher.

　

Good - it burned through the hazier bits and allowed her to focus in a way she wouldn’t have been able to without it.

　

Sitting up straighter in the chair, Duval directed a tense if unimpressed look the Admiral’s way. "We both know you won’t do that, Sir. Just like we both know that this is exactly what you wanted from the beginning - exactly what you not so subtly _suggested_ should be my aim in the first place. I’m in Khan’s bed, Admiral. _Firmly_ in, I might add. I am well aware that I should have told you sooner, but I really don’t understand why you are this pissed off about one little oversight on my part."

　

Marcus narrowed his eyes at her, his expression hardening. "One...little...oversight," he said, over-enunciating each word. He leaned forward, his face filling the screen. "Are you really going to pretend that’s all this was?"

　

"There’s nothing to pretend about," she said shortly, dismissively. "Khan and I have had several weeks of enthusiastic sex which I failed to inform you about but should have. That’s it. That’s the whole story. There’s nothing else to be concerned about."

　

For a moment, Marcus just sat, looking at her. Then he reached out and casually flicked at his controls; finally shutting off the footage, much to her relief. "Nothing else to be concerned about," he parroted, a bit incredulous and a lot angry. "I guess that’s at least _partly_ true - I’m _not_ concerned about the fact that you’re fucking him, so you’re right there. But you see, Duval...I think there’s a whole hell of a lot else that I _do_ need to be concerned about."

　

"Like what, might I ask, Sir?"

　

Marcus let out a bark of disbelieving laughter. "Do you want a _list_ , Duval?"

　

She arched a brow at him. "It _would_ be helpful in proving to you that your concerns are baseless."

　

"Well then," Marcus full-on shouted at her, "where should I begin? How about with _this_?"

　

He punched another button and suddenly another small screen popped up before her eyes. The footage it played was different from the last; grayscaled and clearly the product of a night-vision capable device set in the corridor outside the training room. This particular image showed her standing beside the door with Khan in front of the console, fingers flying over the controls.

　

"Shockingly enough, I am more than a little bit concerned about the fact that your _prisoner_ is not only accessing but straight out _hacking_ our systems with disturbing regularity. He erases the gathered data from our recording devices on nearly a daily basis, no matter what procedures we put in place to block him. He plows through firewalls and accesses secured files whenever the mood strikes him. And _now_ , he’s apparently able to find his way into systems that are locked down under the highest protocols and do whatever the fuck he wants while he’s in there!"

　

"Forgive me, Sir, but I really don’t understand why any of what you just said surprises you. You know what he is and you know what he’s capable of - it’s the reason he’s here, isn’t it?"

　

Marcus ignored her, continuing on as if she hadn’t said anything at all. "I’m also very much concerned about what it means that my best, most loyal Agent is suddenly holding out on me. Why didn’t you tell me that you were fucking him, Duval? The fact that you didn’t makes me wonder what you’re hiding. It makes me wonder if you’ve let yourself become _compromised_."

　

He was so much closer to the truth than he actually knew he was, but Duval was extremely careful not to let him see that. "You are reading a whole hell of a lot more into that than necessary, Sir. Me not telling you wasn’t some big conspiracy on my part - it was nothing but caution, pure and simple. I wanted to make sure I had him, if you’ll excuse the expression, well in hand, before I let you in on my success."

　

A beat.

　

"I thought that," Marcus said at length. "The first time I watched this footage, I thought...I know Duval, she’d want to have all her ducks in a row before she reported back. But then, I watched it again," he reached down, tapping away at the controls again and suddenly the footage looped backwards, now showing the scene from _before_ Khan‘s hacking, "and I noticed something. Something that made me think twice about dismissing the possiblity that you might have gotten a bit...confused."

　

On the screen, Khan was kissing her. Her eyes were wide open, her hands stiff at her sides and she suddenly knew exactly what Marcus was talking about, could remember the way she had given in - the way she had surrendered. And when Marcus paused the image just at that exact moment when her eyes had rolled shut and her body had almost folded into Khan’s, she cursed her own stupidity.

　

_This_ was what she had been trying to keep herself from.

　

_This_ was what she had been trying to avoid.

　

Marcus punched a few more buttons and the video began to loop, showing her obvious submission in stark and repeated detail. "That looks like a whole hell of a lot more than just ‘taking him in hand’ to me, Duval. That looks a whole hell of a lot like you’ve developed _feelings_ for that son of a bitch."

　

There was a knot in her chest; a thick, heavy lump that squeezed at her heart and nearly forced the air from her lungs. She hated this. God how she _hated_ this.

　

"It’s really not like that, Sir," she assured, amazed at how well she was able to modulate her tone even now. Apparently, her compartmentalization abilities were even better developed than she’d believed them to be. "It’s really not like that at _all._ I’d prefer not to go into detail about this, so I’ll simply put it this way - he’s _good,_ Sir. Very... _very_...good. So good that sometimes even I get caught up in the _moment,_ shall we say. And that’s what you’re seeing in that footage, Admiral - a momentary lapse due to the fact that his tongue is as wicked in this capacity as it is in every other."

　

Marcus grimaced and looked away, looking distinctly uncomfortable now. "Jesus Christ, Duval...I didn’t need to know that."

　

She pulled a bland face and gave another small shrug. "Just being honest in the hopes it gets me out of trouble on this one, Sir. I’ve been working too hard at securing his loyalties to have it all thrown away because you think I’ve turned into some giant sap who falls in love with a man just because he’s a good lay."

　

Looking at her, likely gauging how much he could believe her, Marcus finally gave a sigh, rubbing tiredly at his eyes. "Well, hell...I guess we’ll just have to go with that for the time being. I’m not saying I believe you, but I’d be an idiot not to at least give you the benefit of the doubt, Duval. I think, just to be sure, that I’ll head out there for a visit. An extended visit. I need to observe the two of you for myself; really get a feel for your new dynamic to see whether I have anything to worry about or not."

　

Duval schooled her expression, hiding her distaste. "I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Sir. You know how Khan is with you - all temper and resentment and nothing of any real use to us. And the more he’s forced into your company, the worse that’s going to get."

　

Marcus smiled then, a patently knowing, self-satisfied twist of his lips that set her teeth on edge. "Well then, I guess we’ll see whether you’ve got those hooks set as deep as you think you do, Duval. If you do, I see no reason why you couldn’t persuade him to play nice while I’m there."

　

"All due respect, Sir," Duval said, the threat implicit in his words eliciting a frisson of rebellious irritation, "but I think you’re setting your expectations a bit too high here. Having influence over Khan is one thing, but outright controlling him? That’s never gonna happen and I’ve never claimed that I could."

　

Marcus just looked at her, grin still firmly in place. "Backtracking already, Lieutenant? You’re the one who said you’ve got him, and I quote, ‘well in hand’."

　

"You _know_ that’s not what I..."

　

"Now, I can’t say when I’ll actually manage to get out there," Marcus cut her off, unapologetically talking over her. "Could be two weeks, could be a month...depends on what comes up. Either way, I have one order for you in the meantime, Duval."

　

"Sir?"

　

Marcus shed his smile like a snake sheds its skin, his expression turning stone cold. "You are not, under any circumstances, to say a word about this to Khan. Do not tell him and do not prepare him...I’m not looking to watch the two of you put on a damn song and dance show for my sake. I want to see how he is with you under the worst possible circumstances."

　

"You want me to throw away the trust I’ve built with him so that you can test the strength of the trust I’ve built with him," Duval snarked. "Won’t that be just a little bit counterproductive, Sir?"

　

"Don’t tell him you knew about it. Act surprised," he snapped right back at her. "You’re an elite Agent, Duval...fucking _figure it out_ instead of bitching about how hard it is."

　

Arrogant fucking prick...

　

"Of course, _Sir_. Why didn’t I think of that?"

　

Marcus leaned forward again, his eyes boring into hers. "I’d watch my mouth if I were you, Duval. I gave you an inch and you’ve taken a goddamned light-year and I’m swiftly losing patience with constantly having to keep an eye on you."

　

Duval bit back on her frustration; forced herself to keep her mouth shut, lower her eyes and nod respectfully. "Understood. I’ll do better, Sir."

　

"Don’t disappoint me again, Duval. You won’t like what’ll happen if you do."

　

The screen cut to black before she had a chance to respond, which was, quite frankly, fine with her - she wouldn’t have known what to say anyway.

　

Mother...fucker...

　

That plate of french fries was tumbling and twisting in her stomach and Duval had to fight down the urge to be sick all over the very expensive control panel. She just sat there for several long moments, staring at the blank viewscreen and wavering back and forth between cursing herself for her carelessness and wracking her brain to figure out what the hell she was going to do.

　

Eventually, she pushed herself up and out of the chair and walked out of the Comm Room. Making her way down one corridor after another, her brain working in overdrive as she considered her options.

　

She wasn’t stupid - Marcus knew perfectly well that Khan would never allow her or anyone else to lead him around by the balls like that. But she also knew that Khan wasn’t _actually_ the target of Marcus’ little game.

　

She was.

　

She’d fucked up - _again -_ had lost Marcus’ trust - _again -_ and if she wanted to earn it back, she was going to have prove herself.

　

_Again_.

　

Because clearly, a decade of flawless service wasn’t proof _enough_...

　

All too soon, she was at the door of their quarters. Staring at it, knowing that he was inside, maybe still asleep...maybe just waiting for her to return...

　

Sucking in and then letting out a long, deep breath, Duval nodded her head once. Decidedly.

　

She was going to obey orders...at least for the time being. Once, she had taken the time to think the whole thing through further, she would tell him. But really, there was no need to lay it all out as soon as she walked in - Marcus himself had said that it would be at least two weeks before he was able to come, so she had plenty of time to figure things out.

　

And she _would_ figure things out.

　

She always did.

 

　

　

 

　

　

　

　

　

　

 


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing, save for the things that belong to me.
> 
>  
> 
> A/N: Trigger warnings in this chapter for discussion of past abuse. 
> 
> Thank you to all who have read/reviewed/favorited/left kudos! I greatly appreciate it!
> 
> All kinds of love to my beta-reading baby sis yet again…I love you, Xaraphis, even when I hate you! ;)

_(Ten Days Later)_

She didn’t know what to do.

 

As Duval lingered beneath the hot spray of the shower – hand braced against the wall, head down, shoulders slumped – that thought ate at her. Taunted her.

 

She lifted her hand, fingers curling into a tight fist that she let fall back against the water-slick wall, tired and frustrated and wishing like hell that she could just take it all back. That she could turn back the clock and make it so that this whole stupid situation had never happened in the first place.

  

This...this... _ridiculous_ , self-scripted drama, penned and plotted to ruinous perfection by her own arrogance and folly.

 

_You can figure it out_ , her voice mocked from within, bitter and venomous as it spit the words into her mind, shoulders bowing even further beneath the weight of them, _you can handle anything. You can make it all work._

_You cocky, short-sighted idiot_.

  

Duval let out a shuddering breath, leaning forward to press her forehead against her fist, eyes screwed tightly shut against the onslaught of internal remonstration and recrimination.

 

The past week had been miserable. Absolutely miserable.

 

With the knowledge of Marcus’ imminent, if indeterminate, arrival hanging over her head, she had been constantly on guard; constantly looking over her shoulder for the old son of a bitch to appear. The ambiguity, she well knew, had been deliberate on his part – the first shot fired in what would undoubtedly prove a devious and intensive campaign to punish her for her transgressions. Leaving her on tenterhooks with no clear idea of when or where he might turn up was just the sort of thing that would appeal to Marcus, who played the sadist even better than he did the martyr.

 

Why she had ever, even for a moment, imagined that it was a good idea not to tell Marcus about the developments in her relationship with Khan, she had no idea. At the time, her reasons for doing so had felt perfectly rational. Now, not a one of them made even the slightest bit of real sense. Khan, it pained her to admit, had been right – she should have told Marcus straight off that first day.

 

Words of wisdom she’d have done well to heed all those weeks ago when she’d decided instead that she could out-maneuver Marcus. Words of wisdom she’d have done even better to heed only _one_ week ago when she’d somehow imagined that she could out-maneuver _Khan_.

 

And now look where all that self-congratulatory chest-thumping had gotten her? Marcus had her over a barrel and Khan...

 

Well, _shockingly_ enough, Khan had seen straight through her, not fooled in the slightest by her repeated attempts to divert and deflect. He had looked at her...looked into her...and he had known almost immediately that something was wrong, that something had happened. As had become his habit where she was concerned, he had said nothing, donenothing; had, rather, given her the space and time to come to him with the truth.

  

Something that she, so stubbornly convinced that she was doing the right thing, hadn’t done...and for which she was already suffering the consequences.

  

_Nothing better_ , she thought to herself as she pushed away from the wall and turned into the spray, reaching out to shut off the water with a swift crank of her wrist, _than gettin’ shot in the ass with a bullet you loaded into a gun that you made._ She snatched up her towel from the hook just outside the shower, whipping it around her body with a snap.

 

“ _Outstanding_ work, Duval,” she sighed as she stepped out, the floor chilly on her bare feet.   “Seriously...outstanding work.”

  

Weary and heart heavy, she gave a huff and headed straight for the door, towel tucked tightly around her, hair dripping trails of swiftly cooling water down the back of her neck and onto the tops of her shoulders. The room beyond was empty as she padded through, all evidence – the closed door, the light glowing from beneath, the faint sound of movement from within – suggesting that Khan was still in his room.

 

Had been in his room, in fact, since the previous afternoon. _Conceptual work_ , he had claimed just before the door slipped shut behind him, closing him in and her very much out.

  

Conspicuously out.

 

_Deliberately_ out.

 

Watching that door close from the wrong side for the first time in months had stung; so much so that she’d had to blink, look down, look away. She had sat on the edge of her chair, hunched over, elbows on her knees, gaze wide and unfocused as a thick, tingling cocktail of guilt and dread had bubbled up from her stomach and flooded her chest.

 

They hadn’t fought. Hadn’t even bickered. In fact, not a single harsh word had been exchanged.

 

Khan had simply...asked. He had asked her what was going on and he had asked it plainly, without even a suggestion of anger or censure. He had stood watching her once he had spoken, his eyes raking her up and down. So hopeful – so _expectant_.

  

The flash of disappointment on his face when she had brushed his inquiry aside with a flippant dismissal had silenced her, froze the forced smile on her lips. But it was the darkness that came next that truly stunned her. Accusation had hung thickly in his gaze, a gathering shadow that grew darker the longer she remained silent.

 

When he had eventually given up on an answer, he had simply turned his back on her and walked to the door of his room, not even turning around when he informed her that he had work to do and would be occupied for the remainder of the day. He hadn’t said that he wanted to be left alone, but then, he hadn’t needed to; the ' _keep out_ ’ had been implicit.  

 

Forlorn, banished from his sight and his side, Duval had sat there for far longer than she should have, his resolute withdrawal and her prideful culpability eating holes in her heart. She had, eventually, retreated to her own room, though she had purposely left her door open, wide and waiting.

  

_Just in case..._

  

She needn't have bothered.

  

He hadn’t come and she had spent a miserable night, tossing and turning fretfully in a bed that felt far too large and entirely too empty. What sleep she’d gotten hadn’t been restful in the slightest and she’d risen that morning feeling tired and sad and just...wretched.

 

In her own room now, she dried herself and shrugged on a pair of dark gray pants and a loose white tank – staying-in clothes, because she didn’t think she had it in her to leave her room, let alone their quarters. Not today. Not when she felt like... _this_.

  

Duval took up her brush and pulled it through her hair, impassive gaze falling flatly on her reflection in the mirror above her dresser, noting with faint concern how haggard and pinched she looked. Her skin, though always pale these days – the unavoidable consequence of her current, sun-starved living arrangements – was now positively _ashen_ and dark, bruise-like half-circles hung beneath her eyes _._ Her unsmiling mouth cut a pale, colorless line across the bottom of her face, her unhappiness written in the wistful downturn at each corner of her lips.

 

She looked sad. Mournful.

  

It was hard to look at, this truth in her reflection – hard to look at and damned uncomfortable to see. She had come to think of her face as a blank canvas, open and waiting for her expert hand to paint on whatever emotion was required, depending upon the situation at hand. But this...there was nothing the least bit feigned about _this_ sorrow and the sight of such raw, honest emotion staring back at her from the familiar planes of her own face...

 

It made her stomach clench and roll, turning unhappy somersaults in the pit of her stomach and leaving her faintly breathless. With a short, sharp exhale, she dropped her eyes from her perusal of her face, unwilling and unable to map it further at present, though the sight she focused on next was hardly much better.

  

The wound at the base of her throat had become, as expected, a very visible scar.

 

Finished with her brush, Duval dropped it to the already dinged and dented surface of her dresser top. Her eyes traced the angry red gash and she leaned forward slightly, eyes narrowing. Absently, she brought one hand up to touch the mark, her fingers skating lightly along the raised rope of flesh, her eyes skipping back and forth between it and the fainter, but still very much there lash marks around her wrist.

  

“It has healed well.”

  

His voice was quiet; as reserved as she had ever heard it. She didn’t jump, didn’t turn, just kept staring at the livid reminder of yet another mistake, this one writ in sinew and skin. “Guess so,” she said, voice thin, scratchy. “Still hate it.”

  

For a long moment, there was silence, though she could hear a faint rasp of fabric so she knew he was still there.

  

“If it offends you so, there are...ways...to erase it.”

  

Duval’s hand fell to her side and she stood up straighter, though she kept her back to him. Memories of waking up in the bed just behind her, well and whole and sporting a body wiped clean of its hard-earned topography danced across her mind’s eye, the remembered thrill of a clean slate sending a ripple of regret down her spine. “Tempting,” she admitted, “but no. Whatever you did...once can be forgotten. Twice would be a mistake.” She turned slightly, head cocking to look at him over her shoulder - he was leaning against the doorway, shoulder to the frame and arms crossed over his chest, eyes dark and expression inscrutable. “Not to mention, I can’t afford three days of downtime right now.”

 

Khan pushed off the frame, approaching her with measured steps, hesitant - as if he questioned his welcome. “It would not be as before,” he hastened to assure her, stepping up behind her, his eyes meeting hers in the mirror. “I have considered the... _process_. I am positive that I can duplicate the results without duplicating the side-effects.”

  

“No,” she repeated, shaking her head slightly. “you do whatever you did again and I’m gonna end up having to answer even more questions than I did the first time around. So really, don't worry about it.”

  

His eyes, which had been on her throat, flicked up to meet hers once more. “If you are certain...”

 

“I am,” she said, nodding her head once. “I’m absolutely certain.”

  

Khan nodded and she watched his gaze dip, wander. One big, long-fingered hand came up to touch the back of her neck, his first two fingers pressing against the soft spot at the base of her skull gently before slowly sweeping down the length of her spine. His fingers stopped in the middle of her back, just where pale skin met stark white shirt. “I was surprised at the thoroughness of the process,” he said, tracing lazy zig-zags across her skin. “Admittedly, I did not take the time to consider every eventuality before implementing treatment, but,” he flattened his palm between her shoulder blades, fingers splayed wide, “I would never have anticipated _this_.”

  

His touch burned hot as ever against her skin, but Duval could barely feel it. Could barely feel anything at all beyond a tingling horror that started in her chest and radiated out into her extremities.“ _This_? Exactly what _this_ wouldn't you have anticipated?”

 

He was quiet, but his fingers once more began sketching lines upon her skin. Lines that slowly began to form a pattern. A familiarpattern.

 

A _hated_ pattern.

 

Swallowing against the sudden burn of bile in the back of her throat, Duval shrugged away from his touch, hands bracing against the top of her dresser as she leaned as far away from him as she could get. “You told me you didn’t look,” she said hotly, glaring at his reflection. “Those first few days, while I was unconscious…you told me that you hadn’t looked!”

  

Khan's hand hung in the now empty space between them, his eyes lifting to meet hers in the mirror, wariness sharpening his gaze. “Nor did I,” he growled, fingers curling into a fist that he dropped back to his side. “Rebecca – I did not _touch_ you beyond what was absolutely necessary.”

  

“Then _how_ do you know? How could you possibly have found out about those scars?” She was losing her grip on her temper, and after everything...after Marcus and a week of constant stress and a god-awful night...she didn’t know if she could reign it back in. More than that, she wasn’t even sure that she wanted to. The anger felt good – so much cleaner than the guilt, so much more manageable than the regret.

  

Spine straightening, Khan cocked a brow at her. “I certainly did not learn of them from _you_. You, who shares only what is required while concealing everything of real import. You, who retreats at even the _suggestion_ of true intimacy.”

  

“Don’t you dare,” Duval spat, slapping her hand down upon the dresser top with a crack. “Don’t you dare try to make this about _me._ Tell me how you _know_!”

  

She was shouting now, all of those disparate emotions she had been struggling with merging, finally, into a consuming, blistering _fury_. One that, it appeared, Khan was more than prepared to meet head on. He squared his shoulders and lifted his chin, narrowed gaze icing over as he stared her down haughtily.

 

“Your personnel files, of course,” he snapped. “Both the standard file _and_ the so-called restricted one. Not that accessing the latter was more difficult, despite its name. As with everything else about this bureaucratic behemoth that you have indentured yourself to, the encryptions on secured files are woefully ineffective. I had learned every documented detail of your history the very day we arrived here.”

  

The words dropped into the air between them like rocks into a pond, ever-widening ripples fanning outward. Reeling in the turbulence, buffeted by the wake of his blunt response, Duval’s jaw clenched so hard that it began to ache.

 

_…he plows through firewalls and accesses secured files whenever the mood strikes him…_

  

Marcus’ words from their last conversation. She hadn’t given any thought to them at the time; had never even considered the full ramifications of what had felt like little more than a petty gripe at the time. But now, full realization hit her hard, like a fist to the stomach. She whirled around to face him, livid spots of color high on her cheeks. “How…how could you _do_ that? Who the fuck do you think you are?”

 

Khan rolled his eyes. Hard.

 

“Oh _do_ spare me your righteous outrage,” he scoffed. “At best, it displays a stunning lack of self-awareness; at worst, a piteous attempt at deliberate duplicity – either way, I expect far better of you, Rebecca.”

  

“ _Fuck_ your expectations,” Duval snapped, fisted hands pressing hard into her thighs. “That’s was my _life_ in those files, Khan. My whole life and…”

  

“Hardly,” he cut in with a huff. “I highly doubt your Academy transcripts, a smattering of old mission debriefs and a handful of vague medical documentation constitutes your whole life.”

  

Duval shook her head, glare intensifying. “Really? You’re gonna lie now? About _that_? I know what was in those files, Khan…and it was a hell of a lot more than that.”

  

“Perhaps once,” he allowed, “but I can assure you, Rebecca, the files I read contained nothing save for what I’ve already described. It was, I must admit, something of a disappointment.”

  

That made exactly _zero_ sense. Those files…if he’d read them, he should know everything. There had been psychological work ups in there. Family history. Everything. That those things weren’t there…

 

_Later_ , she told herself firmly. _Worry about it later. It doesn’t matter anyway. It doesn’t matter whether he saw it or not…the point is…_

  

“You had no _right_ to that information, Khan.” She hurled the words at him. “Empty or full, detailed or not, you had no right to look at any of it. No right at all. What is or isn’t in those files is none of your business unless _I_ say it is!”

  

“And _my_ life was _yours_?” He lobbed back at her, absolutely snarling the words. “Tell me, my little hypocrite...did you take _my_ privacy into consideration before you scoured the file Marcus had assembled on me? Did you hesitate in the slightest when you had the facts of _my_ life laid bare before _you_?”

  

It wasn’t the same thing. It wasn’t even remotely the same thing, but she wasn’t going to even attempt to argue the point with him. There was no point – he was determined to paint her the villain of this piece. Far be it from her to ruin the fantasy for him.

  

“Well you know, I considered feeling bad about invading your privacy, but after the third article I read detailing the way you had systematically murdered, pillaged and plundered your way to that throne you’re so proud of, I pretty much stopped giving a damn about your poor, put-upon little feelings.”

  

If that barb hit the mark, she couldn’t tell. He didn’t even flinch.

  

“Murdering, pillaging and plundering for personal benefit, you say? Forgive me, are you speaking of _my_ history or your own?”

  

“I am _nothing_ like you!”

  

“No, you are not,” Khan agreed. “I, at the very least, am _capable_ of speaking truth. While you, on the other hand, appear incapable of managing even the simplest honesty, let alone larger truths.”

  

Slippery ground, this. Very, very slippery ground. Guilt slowly but surely eating its way through all that lovely anger she’d been cultivating, Duval forced herself not to look away from him. “You act like all I’ve ever done is lie to you when you know – you _know_ – that I’ve gotten myself in trouble for being too honest with you. I’ve tried harder than I’ve ever tried before with you; given you more of _me_ than I’ve ever given to _anyone_. What more do you _want?_ ”

  

Khan took a step forward, standing now toe to toe with her, forcing her to look up at him out of sheer force of will. “Full truth,” he said, each word a whip-crack of sound. “Real honesty, rather than the lip service you seem to think should suffice in its stead.”

 

“And if I can’t?” She swallowed, took a deep breath and still didn’t let herself look away despite the growing coldness in his eyes. “If I can’t give you any of that? What then?”

  

Slowly – so slowly – Khan lowered his head toward hers, his lips just barely brushing against hers. Duval’s eyes slid shut, overwhelmed, as she always was, by the sheer force of nearness. She let out a shuddering breath, her face instinctively turning up to his, offering herself to him the only way she knew how.

  

Khan hummed low in his throat, dark and delicious and she could _feel_ the rumble of it across her skin. “If you cannot give me that – if you _will not_ give me that…,” one of his hands came up, fingers sweeping delicately up the line of her jaw to rest just beneath the point of her chin, “…then you may inform your master…” and suddenly, his fingers grabbed her chin, rough and painful and Duval’s eyes shot open, finding nothing but ice and venom in his gaze, “…that I have no further use for you.”

  

And then he was gone, the door of her room sliding shut behind him, leaving her standing there, eyes wide, mouth agape and heart in shreds. Numb, she stumbled back against her dresser once more, arms hanging limp at her sides.

 

Of course. _Of course_.

 

This was the price of her poor choices. The cost of her arrogance.

 

This was every single one of her birds come home to roost all at once.

 

This, all of this – Khan’s anger, Marcus’ distrust – was _her fault_.

 

Slowly, brokenly, Duval slid to the floor, legs drawn up in front of her, arms wrapped round her shins. She turned her face to the side, resting her cheek on one knee as she stared, dry-eyed and unseeing at the blankness of the wall beside her.

  

There was so _much_ crowding her brain; so many different thoughts and feelings. Justifications and accusations and recriminations and rationalizations...all of them careening through her mind, ricocheting off her heart and leaving her just… _bleeding_ inside.

 

_Aching_ inside.

 

And she just…accepted it. Her arms tightened around her legs, her fingers bit into the loose fabric of her pants, but she allowed no other outward expression of her inner turmoil – just sat there, staring at the wall.

  

Because it was all her fault.

  

Because she had brought this on herself.

  

* * *

 

Later – she didn’t actually know how much later – Duval was pulled back to the present by the distinctive sound of Khan’s heavy boots thudding heavily upon the floor, sounding very much like they were approaching her door. Sighing deeply, she lifted her head from her knees and dropped it back against the drawer behind her, staring at the ceiling now rather than the wall.

  

In true Khan fashion, he didn’t bother with knocking or permission…he simply activated the door and walked into her room. Stalked in, more like; stalked in and didn’t even bother to look to her before he began striding up and down the length of her small room – all lean lines and predatory grace; a captive tiger, pacing back and forth at the bars of his cage. She was as silent as he was, content to let him control the silence; satisfied with just _watching_ him.

  

Looking at him, she realized then more than ever before, was a luxury; one that she wouldn’t be able to afford for long. If earlier was any indication, she was running dangerously low on that particular currency at present.

 

Finally, he stopped, clearly having come to some decision. Whirling around to face her, posture rigid and his arms behind his back – parade rest, his military training on impeccable display – Khan met her eyes, his own flaring briefly with what looked like surprise before quite suddenly shifting his gaze ever so slightly to the side. “You…have not moved.”

 

 “Not really, no,” she said hoarsely, letting her eyes slip shut – looking at him was beginning to hurt. “I sat down, if that counts.”

 

 A pause.

  

“It has been nearly two hours…”

  

“Has it?” Duval shrugged, a barely there lift of one shoulder, eyes still closed, the rest of her expression blank, inscrutable. “Hadn’t noticed.”

  

He took a step forward; she could hear the scuff of his boots across the floor. “What is this, Rebecca? What are you doing?”

  

Letting out a deep sigh, Duval cracked her eyes open, finding his eyes focused once more on her face. “What’s it look like I’m doing? I’m sitting on the floor feeling sorry for myself, Khan. Is that all right with you?”

  

His frown deepened. “It is simply unlike you to behave so.”

 

“How would _you_ know? Or are we pretending that you didn’t accuse me of being distant and emotionally barren? I mean seriously, it’s fine if that’s your plan…I’ve been told I’m a hell of a liar so I’m _sure_ I can fake it if…”

 

 “Enough,” Khan growled, storm clouds building in his eyes. “That is enough, Rebecca. This petulance does not become you and it will hardly aide us in mending our disagreement.”

  

Duval’s jaw clenched and she let her eyes slide back shut. “Considering the last I heard from you was that you wanted nothing else to do with me, I hadn’t figured there was anything left to mend. That being the case, I figured it didn’t matter much how I acted.”

  

She could hear him breathing, the steady ebb and flow of it echoing in her ears. He was thinking something fierce – she could almost hear _that_ too. Again, no point in interrupting him; he’d talk in his own time.

  

Besides, she had nothing else to say – nothing that he’d be interested to hear anyway.

  

“The scars on your back,” he barked out at length, sounding immensely put out, “you received them _prior_ to your Section career, did you not?”

  

_And we’re back to this…_

Duval let took a long, slow breath through her nose before letting it out on a rushed sigh. “Does it even matter one way or the other, Khan? I mean, honestly, does it _really_ matter?”

 

“It certainly appeared to matter to you before.”

 

_God,_ she’d been so stupid. What the hell had she been _thinking_ , showing him that much? If he hadn’t caught her so far off guard, she would have just brushed it off…brushed _him_ off. “I think we both know there was a whole lot more to that drama earlier than just those scars. I…just…can we just call it an overreaction and move on? In all honesty, that’s really not too far off the truth.”

 

His eyes flashed and Khan took a small step toward her. “Though that may be true, I insist on knowing…” he took yet another step forward, his expression turning fierce, “who gave you those scars?”

  

Her stomach turned over and now it was her who looked away, chewing on her lip and reveling in the sting when she bit down just a little too hard.

 

“Who beat you, Rebecca?”

  

_Son of a bitch._

_Son…of…a…bitch…_

He just…he had to go there. He _had_ to ask…

 

Duval shook her head, shoving all those old demons – stirred from their slumber by his prying – back down into the depths where they belonged. “Why are you even _asking_ me this? It doesn’t even _matter._ ”

 

“It most assuredly _does_ matter, Rebecca,” he said sharply, his voice going low and ragged, passionate.

 

Her eyes snapped up to his, drawn to him despite herself, iron filings caught by the inexorable pull of a strong magnet. There was determination in his eyes, in his expression – the kind of determination that she knew there was no point fighting against. Especially since she would not only be satisfying his current curiosity, she would also be putting to rest all those accusations of her not sharing herself with him from earlier.

 

“If I’m gonna tell you any of this, I might as well tell you all of it.” She shifted slightly, stretching her legs out in front of her and then crossing them beneath her. She could do this; she knew how to do this. Neat, concise, tidy – pertinent details only. The perfect post-op breakdown. Easy as pie. “So I’d get comfortable if I were you.”

  

Khan straightened, shoulders going rigid once more. “I am perfectly comfortable. You may proceed.”

 

“Suit yourself,” she shrugged, then sighed, sliding her eyes closed – it would be easier that way; easier not to watch him watching her. “My momma was only eighteen when she married my daddy. He was older; twenty-five and fresh out of Star Fleet Academy. My granddaddy _hated_ him on sight, forbid my momma to have anything to do with him. But they ran off and got married anyway. Almost exactly nine months later, I came along and for the next seven years, my life was about as normal and uninteresting as it gets.”

  

She took a breath, let it out.

  

“I was seven when everything changed,” she continued. “Daddy was in space, had been for months. My Gram had shown up outta the blue, wanted to take me and momma to lunch – I remember it was a Sunday; she was still dressed for church, hat and all. Momma said she had errands to run, sent me on with Gram alone. When Gram and I got back, momma still wasn’t home, so she stayed and we waited, but Momma never did make it home.”

  

Deep down, underneath the calm and the matter-of-fact delivery, memories of that day played in her mind, dusty and disused but still so damn _vivid_. Duval, with the ease of long, deliberate practice, ignored them. Entirely.

 

“It was a car wreck,” she explained coolly, dispassionately. “Daddy was the one who told us when he got there that night – he’d been on his way home when the authorities got hold of him about it. He sent Gram on home and stayed with me that night.”

 

_Strong arms, holding her, cradling her all night long. Talking to her…words she didn’t remember…just the tone, the cadence…the sadness. He’d promised her everything would be all right. He’d promised…_

She slapped the thought away, mentally turning her back on it.

_He’d lied…_

 

Duval brought a hand up, pinching at the bridge of her nose wearily. There was a reason she avoided… _this_. It was fucking _exhausting._

“The next morning, he drove me to my grandparents’ house, hugged me, kissed me on the cheek and then left me standing there on the porch while he drove away. Two days later, a representative from Star Fleet came calling, informing us that he’d killed himself and that, by dint of being my _only_ living relatives, my grandparents had full custody of me. Grandaddy was _thrilled_ , let me tell you. He didn’t even wait for the man in the crisp Star Fleet dress uniform to leave before he started letting us all know just how _thrilled_ he was.”

 

A faint, bouncing creak broke her concentration – Khan, it appeared had decided to sit after all. She smiled faintly. “Told you it was a long story.”

 

“That is not…,” he stopped, voice going even lower than normal. “Continue…please…”

  

“Right, sorry,” she shifted once more, letting her legs slide out straight in front of her, hands rubbing at her thighs. “I spent ten years living with my grandparents after that. It wasn’t great – my granddaddy didn’t have much use for me. Always said I was too much like my daddy. Which, since he blamed my daddy for my momma’s death, didn’t work out too well for me. Luckily, he was happy enough to ignore me most of the time. Grams was better, but not by much. She did, at least, take care of me, in as much as I ever really needed caring for. I learned pretty quick how to be self-sufficient, preferred just to do for myself rather than asking for things from people who made it clear that I was nothing but a burden.”

  

“Rebecca…”

 

“I know, I know…the scars. I’m getting to them, I promise.”

  

“You mis…”

 

 “I needed to get out of there,” she cut across him, not wanting to hear whatever he’d been about to say – there’d been an edge, a roughness to his voice that she just wanted no part of, not if she was going to be able to get through the rest. “So, about a week after I’d graduated from high school, I hitched a ride to the nearest station and caught a transport to New Orleans. Got myself all signed up for Star Fleet Academy at the recruiting office there. I was too young to actually go then, or believe me, I’d have been on a ship to San Francisco that _day_. There was also the part where I didn’t have the grades or the recommendations to get in straight off. I was going to have to spend a few years working my way up to the level required for full acceptance. But frankly, I couldn’t have been happier if they’d short listed me. I spent the night in a hostel on the edge of the Quarter and just about floated home the next day.”

 

A beat.

 

“As you can probably imagine…my grandparents didn’t exactly share my enthusiasm.”

  

For the first time during her retelling, she opened her eyes, training them, unblinking, on the ceiling above her. She couldn’t keep them closed now…not for this…

 

Because those memories were still far, _far_ too close. So close that she could still feel the bite…the burn..

 

“Grams called me ungrateful,” she said, tone gone flat, clinical. “When I asked what, exactly I had to be grateful for, she slapped me twice. Tried to go for a third, but I’d had enough at that point. Caught her hand and knocked it away. My granddaddy didn’t take too kindly to that; popped me square in the face before dragging me out of the house and into the yard. He whipped me with a hickory switch until I passed out, probably after too…I don’t know. Never bothered to ask. Suffice to say, I moved out as soon as I was well enough. Never looked back.”

  

She stared up at the ceiling for a long moment after she’d finished, tracing seams and rivets with her eyes, surprised by just how _heavy_ the silence suddenly felt. Finally, after it started to drag on just a bit too long for her tastes, she lowered her chin, looking at Khan for the first time since she’d started talking.

  

He was staring at her, his face perfectly blank, his eyes shuttered in a way that they hadn’t been in months. At that moment, he was as unreadable to her as he had ever been; so very, very different from the openness she was only now realizing she had come to rely on.

 

Lost to her now…through no one’s fault but her own.

  

Duval smiled, a sad, strained twist of her lips that didn’t look very much like a smile at all. “So there you have it,” she said sadly, “my own little tale of woe. I don’t like to think about it – no _point_ thinking about it when it won’t change anything. Only time I ever really discuss it now are in the annual visits with my Section-issue shrink.” Her grin shifted, gained a shadow of real humor. “Apparently, I have abandonment issues. Text book case, or so he tells me.”

 

Still, Khan said nothing. Just sat on the edge of her bed, back straight and hands braced on his thighs as he watched her through those frustratingly hooded eyes.

  

“I guess that’s not much of a surprise to you,” Duval said when it became clear he wasn’t going to say a word, “considering our earlier conversation.”

  

“No,” Khan agreed at last and his voice was like thunder rolling through the stillness of the room, “it does not.”

  

Duval’s grin slipped, turning swiftly to a frown and she looked away again. She knew what she had to do – what she _needed_ to do, Marcus be damned.

 

_No time like the present_ , she told herself bracingly. _Just get it the hell over with._

“Speaking of things that won’t surprise you,” she lifted her hand up in front of her face, worrying at the catches in the skin around her nails, “I haven’t been honest with you.” She risked a glance at him – she’d seen the sudden shock of tension jolt through him in her peripheral vision – and immediately felt like kicking herself for wording the admission quite that way. “ _This past week_ ,” she said, drawing out each word for emphasis. “I haven’t been honest with you this past week and if you could try not to tear into me _quite_ yet, I’d like to try and fix that.”

  

“Do – _please_ – continue, Lieutenant.”

  

She sighed again. She was getting really tired of sighing. “Marcus knows about the change in our association. More importantly, he knows that I _didn’t_ tell him about it – so I’m in shit yet again. So much so this time that he’s decided to come here himself sometime soon to assess the situation. I don’t know exactly when though; he was deliberately vague about it.”

  

“How?” Khan leaned forward slightly, hands propped on his thighs, suspicion narrowing his gaze. “ _How_ did he learn of it? We have been circumspect.”

  

“Not as circumspect as we should have been, unfortunately.” She thought about how it had felt, to sit there, to watch them on that screen…to watch _Marcus_ watching them…and her stomach did a swoop and dive before settling into a sickening spiral. “Marcus has security footage.”

  

“Impossible,” he shook his head, emphatic. “I was careful – _extraordinarily_ careful – to erase everything from the security feeds that could be even _marginally_ telling. I even went so far as to encrypt a protocol into the surveillance feeds of our quarters, ensuring that they would be immediately wiped if anyone other than myself were to access them, be it locally or remotely. He was _lying_ to you, Rebecca.”

  

Duval cocked her head to the side, not quite knowing where to even _start_ with all of that.

 

_Small,_ she told herself. _Start small and work your way up to the big stuff._

“I sure hope you meant for Marcus to know that you’ve been hacking the system, because believe me…he knows you’ve been hacking the system.”

  

Khan said nothing; revealed nothing. As far as she was concerned, it was as good as a confirmation that he had, indeed, intended for Marcus to know what he was doing. Which, of course, led directly to the question of why he was doing it. That is was a cover tactic, she had no doubt – but what was he laying cover _for_?

  

_Not now. Stay on topic; put that one away for later._

“And he’s not lying, Khan – he has footage.” She tipped her gaze up to his, hesitant and distinctly uncomfortable. “He played it for me.”

 

Khan’s expression, so fierce only moments before, fell; went completely slack with what looked very much like dismay before swiftly and soundly snapping back to that deliberate blankness. “What do you mean, he _played it for you_?”

 

“Exactly what it sounds like and let’s leave it at that. I’m not exactly eager to relive _that_ experience.”

  

“Where was it from? When?”

  

_How’d I know he was gonna ask that? Why oh why does he just have to know_ everything _?_

“Our late night excursion last week. Never even occurred to me that those security feeds would still be active, let alone monitored,” she paused, wincing, shuddering, “but they definitely are – they’re definitely a whole hell of a lot of both.”

 

More silence – she could almost _hear_ him seething. She’d never seen anyone clench their jaw _that_ tightly before.

 

“And why, precisely,” Khan said, his voice tight with the effort he was exerting to keep himself in check, “did you keep this information from me?”

  

“Because he ordered me not to say a word about any of it – not to even _hint_ at any of it to you.”

  

That…oh…he didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at _all_. That much was immediately apparent in the arch of his brow, the furrows across the bridge of his nose and the pinched downturn of his perfect lips – he looked disgusted. Absolutely, terrifically _disgusted_.

 

“Of _course_.” Contempt dripped from every word, affront from every syllable – she’d been on the receiving end of his disdain more than once, but never before had it felt so… _personal_. “ _Of course_ he did. And of _course_ you leapt to obey…”

  

“…like the good little lapdog I am, yes,” Duval finished for him, tired and resigned and more hurt by his reaction than she would ever dream of showing. “Though in my defense, this time he pretty much told me straight out that it was follow orders or spend the rest of my life as a nameless number in a prison colony that no one’s ever heard of because it doesn’t technically exist. So yeah, I followed orders – or tried to, at least, given that I’ve just gone and done exactly what I wasn’t supposed to do.”

  

A beat.

 

“He threatened you with incarceration?”

  

“Not in so many words, but that was the gist of it. Hell, he might’ve meant that he’d just hand me my burn notice instead. I don’t know – I didn’t ask. Either way, it was definitely an ‘or else’ kind of situation, and with Marcus, the ‘else’ is pretty much always erasure of one kind or another.”

  

Khan was leaning forward now, his hands on his knees and his gaze fixed on her, unblinking and a little bit unnerving. “All of this because you did not inform him of our activities? He would place your neck on the block for no more than that?”

 

“Doesn’t exactly speak highly of my loyalties, does it? Especially when it’s just the latest in a string of questionable decisions that I’ve made.” Duval picked at a loose thread on the seam of her pants, her culpability a lead weight on her shoulders, in her stomach. “Keeping it from him…it wasn’t the smart thing to do – I see that now. It was a bad call on my part.”

  

“It was,” Khan snapped, the agreement sharp and accusing. “In point of fact, I do believe I said as much to you at the time.”

  

“Yes, you did,” Duval conceded. “And you were right. I should have listened to you – I’m sorry I didn’t.”

  

“ _Why_ did you not listen?” He was studying her with a level of intensity she’d not received from him since the earliest days of their acquaintance. It was a look that was searching and cynical at the same time – a look that told her plainly that he wanted her honesty, but had no expectation that she would give it to him. “Why did you not tell him?”  

  

Well…there really was no reason to hold back now. She’d already shared so much – might as well keep giving him what he’d asked for and hope that she could gain back at least a little bit of the ground she’d lost with her secrecy.

  

“Because it’s what he’d wanted me to do in the first place,” she said, grimacing at the memory, “and I knew how he would be when he found out he’d gotten exactly what he wanted. He’d have been insufferable about it and I…”

  

She stopped, studied him for a moment, drinking in the lines and edges and curves of him. When she’d looked her fill, she shut her eyes, turning her face up to the ceiling once more – she’d give him honesty, but that didn’t mean she had to look at him while she did it.

  

“It meant something to me,” she confessed. “It _means_ something to me. I couldn’t stand the thought of him ruining it with his innuendos and his smugness. Sounds ridiculous, I know, but…it is what it is.”

 

Another round of silence. This one went on so long that Duval, starting to feel the weight of it, cracked an eye open to see if he was even still in the room – he could move with absolute silence if he needed to.

 

He was, in fact, still in the room. Still on the bed.

  

Still watching her. And the look on his face…

  

“You did not know,” he said, his voice quiet. _Rough_.

  

Goosebumps raced up Duval’s arms, her breath hitching in her chest, caught somewhere just above her heart. He sounded…she’d only ever heard him sound like that once before…

 

“I didn’t know what?”

  

…in their quarters…on the couch…her bloody coat clasped so _tight_ in his hands…

  

“When you admitted the truth,” he rasped, “when you disobeyed Marcus’ direct order…am I correct that you had no idea that you could do so freely? That you had no idea of the modifications to the surveillance systems that would allow you to do so?”

  

“Of course not. How could I? You never mentioned them.”

  

Khan sucked in a sharp breath, his hands curling into white-knuckled fists. “You gave me the truth, all the while knowing that it could mean your very _life_ to do so. You risked...” he stopped, shook his head, eyes closed and a pained furrow across his brow. “Rebecca…you _risked_ your _life_ for no better reason than to appease _me_.”

  

Crossing her arms over her chest protectively – she didn’t want to discuss this; she was frankly tired of discussing everything _period_ – Duval shoved one shoulder up in a negligent shrug. “It needed to be done, so let’s not make a bigger deal out of it than it is. I mean, I didn’t know for sure that I wasn’t being eavesdropped on, but I honestly didn’t believe that Marcus would have actually bugged my _bedroom_. I thought – naively, I know – that he had more respect for me than that.”

 

Pushing to his feet, Khan stalked across the room toward her, stopping beside her, the toes of his boots just brushing her thigh. He stared down at her, his eyes – stunningly blue as they stared down at her – were _piercing._ “And if he had heard? If he stood by his threat?”

  

Getting angry now – she was so _tired_ ; mentally…physically…emotionally, she was just _exhausted_ – Duval couldn’t help the glare that she directed up in his general direction. “I don’t know, ok? Is that what you want to hear? I have no fucking _clue_.” She snapped her head away, blinking hard against tears that were trying so hard to escape from her eyes. “But I couldn’t _not_ tell you. Not anymore. Not after this morning.”

 

“ _Rebecca_ …”

  

“Stop it, Khan,” Duval hissed, her heart leaping into her throat at the trepidation – the vulnerability – in his voice as he said her name and made it sound a promise and a prayer all in one. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, rubbing hard. “Please stop. I’m just…I’m tired. I’m so tired because it was a miserable _fucking_ night and I barely got any sleep and then with everything else…I just want to crawl into my bed and not come out for a week so that…”

  

Duval’s words cut off with a squeak – an honest to goodness _squeak_ – as she was suddenly lifted from the floor, a pair of strong arms sliding beneath her and lifting her up until she was cradled against Khan’s chest, her head tucked beneath his chin. Without a word, he turned back around and returned to her bed, leaning down to deposit her gently upon her narrow mattress before reaching down to haul the counterpane bunched at the end of the unmade bed up and over her legs.

  

Quiet now too, her words stolen by the tender way he was arranging her, Duval simply watched him, hating him just a little bit for making it impossible for her to hate him in the slightest. Once he was satisfied by the positioning of her covers, Khan straightened, a look of such fierce protectiveness in his eyes that it nearly undid her.

 

“Sleep,” he murmured, leaning down once more to buss an entirely chaste kiss across her lips. “Sleep now, Rebecca. There will be time enough for discussion later.”

  

Not trusting her voice – convinced that she would burst into tears if she even tried to talk – Duval simply nodded. Khan nodded back, then straightened, clearly preparing to move away from her. Up from nowhere, a shock of pure desperation jolted through her and before she even knew what she was doing, she’d reached out and grabbed his hand, stopping him…pulling him…keeping him near.

  

“Stay,” she said, proving herself right – the tears began as soon as she spoke, tracking down her face and back into her hair. “Please…please stay. Last night…” she swallowed, mortified by the _need_ in her voice and, most likely, her eyes as well. “Just…stay. Please, Khan?”

  

For several long seconds, he stared down at her, a look on his face that she wasn’t about to even _attempt_ to decipher.

  

But then, without a word, he sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned down, pulling his boots off. Turning toward her, he swung his legs up beside hers and Duval shifted, scooting backwards to make room for him and a heartbeat later, she was in his arms, her head against his chest, his lips pressed against her hair. Wrapped up in him, with the steady beat of his heart beneath her ear and the brush of his fingers up and down her spine, the sleep that had been so elusive for her the night before was suddenly right there, pulling her down into the best bit of sleep she’d had in well over a week.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing, save what’s mine.
> 
> A/N: Chalk up another one! Warnings on this one for some mentions of violence.  
> Thank you to all who have read/reviewed/left kudos! I appreciate every single one of you! Much love to my beta – you keep me right! ;)

_(Three Weeks Later)_

“…and it is the increased energy output of this new drive system that will allow for the generation of a gravitational field powerful enough to obscure the warp signature, thus rendering the torpedoes untraceable.”

 

There was something inherently entertaining about watching Khan explain the finer points of his designs to a room full of engineers and weapons specialists. Sitting back in her chair, unconsciously twirling the stylus of her PADD between her fingers, Duval swept her gaze around the conference table, cataloging the many and varied looks currently being directed at the man seated beside her by his “colleagues”.

 

Most appeared to hover somewhere between resentful and intrigued, grudgingly admiring of his brilliance but put off by his oftentimes less than charitable attitude. Others were unapologetically hostile – those generally being anyone who had, at one point or another, been directly subjected to the blast-chiller of his derision. A few stared on with rapt fascination, eagerness in their posture and fierce interest in their eyes; though whether they were captivated by the beauty of his mind or simply by the beauty of _him_ she couldn’t say.

 

Khan, for his part, was doing an admirable job of keeping his contempt in check. She had only felt the urge to wince twice so far and they were already nearly forty-five minutes into the hour that had been allotted for this meeting. For him, that went beyond mere _good_ behavior and straight on into _best_ behavior territory. It was, by far, the most pleasant exchange he had ever had with Io’s Weapons R&D team.

 

She wasn’t going to get her hopes up though. There was still fifteen minutes to go – plenty of time for that to change. Plenty of time for someone to say something stupid (in his estimation) and for him to turn back into an arrogant prick (in theirs).

 

“Sorry to interrupt, Commander,” Lieutenant Reynolds, who was still smarting from his unceremonious dismissal from the lab all those weeks ago, didn’t sound the least bit sorry, “but you’re wasting your – and _our_ – very valuable time with these things.” He gestured shortly, sharply up at the large display screen on the wall behind Khan where schematic diagrams of the torpedoes in question were sketched out in bright blue and vivid green. “ _Fascinating_ as the concept is, they’re never going to be anything _but_ a concept.”

 

Outwardly, Duval didn’t react at all. Inwardly, she had thrown herself into a full-body flounce, head smacking against the back of her chair and eyes rolling shut in utter, _utter_ exasperation. They had been so close...

 

Watching him now, she could see the way Khan drew himself up in his seat, back snapping straight, shoulders squaring, and his chin coming up. “Is that so? Pray enlighten me as to why that should be, Lieutenant. Enlighten us _all_ as to how you came to such a conclusion.”

 

There was danger in his voice, a warning that nearly everyone else around the table heard at once – heard and, more importantly, _understood_. Reynolds though, he just kept on pushing, grin never faltering.

 

“Cloaking technology is banned under Federation law, Commander. Those torpedoes would violate several very high profile treaties.”

 

Khan’s jaw clenched – she could actually hear the faint grind of his teeth. She knew that sound well. Nothing good ever followed that sound.

 

Part of her was tempted to just lean back and let him have at it. Reynolds had been dragging that cross of his around for far too long now and she couldn’t think of anyone better qualified to relieve him of it than Khan. But the smart, savvy, sensible parts of her knew that no matter how appealing, she just couldn’t do that; couldn’t let _Khan_ do that. No matter what he liked to think, they needed the engineers on their side. So, just as he opened his mouth to talk, Duval shifted her leg sideways beneath the table, the outside edge of her boot knocking into his just hard enough to get his attention.

 

He stopped, shooting her a quick, questioning look, which Duval answered with a pointed one of her own. The entire exchange was over within seconds – so fast that she doubted anyone in the room had even noticed. But for the two of them, it was more than enough. Under the table, Khan’s boot nudged at hers lightly; a gentle acknowledgement.

 

“Those limitations have, I assure you, been accounted for, Lieutenant Reynolds,” he drawled, shooting the other man a withering look but managing to keep his tone relatively civil. “As the stealth capabilities would be activated remotely and only after the torpedoes had been launched, this particular application of so-called cloaking technology does, I assure you, fall well within all active treaty specifications.”

 

“The letter of them, maybe,” Reynolds shot back almost immediately and Duval wished her legs were long enough to reach _him_ under the table, “but certainly not the _spirit_. You’re playing fast and loose with the rules here, Commander. I guarantee you I’m not the only one in this room who sees that – and I guarantee you that plenty of people outside of this room will see that too.”

 

Duval would give him one thing – the little shit was determined. Stupid. But determined.

 

“That’s _your_ opinion,” she jumped in, knowing from experience that it was time to nip this in the bud before Khan lost his temper and went on the offensive, “and it is duly noted, Lieutenant. But we both know you’re not even close to the last word on these things. So how about we all just sign off on the design and let it go through the proper channels. If, once it lands on Admiral Marcus’ desk, he decides to shelve it, then so be it.”

 

Reynolds, gaze shifting to her and turning dismissive – most of the engineers, arrogant asses that they were, tended to brush her and her lack of intellectual credentials right on off – shook his head. “I realize how complicated this is, Lieutenant Duval, but even you have to understand...Marcus would never be stupid enough to…”

 

Behind her, the door opened with a soft hiss, heavy footsteps marching purposefully into the room. Duval didn’t look around. She didn’t need to – the way Reynolds’ mouth snapped shut mid-sentence, the way the color drained from his face told the tale clear enough.

 

_Marcus_.

 

“What wouldn’t I be stupid enough to do, Lieutenant Reynolds?”

 

Duval stiffened, back straightening even as her stomach dropped to somewhere around her knees. She had to give it to the old son of a bitch, he had timed his arrival perfectly – had waited just long enough that she had stopped looking for him around every corner. And now, when she had just begun to let her guard down, here he was, sending her reeling all over again. Beside her, Khan sat up straighter as well, though she suspected his reaction lent itself more to anger than apprehension. Not that he’d had any use for Marcus before, but his dislike had been simmering much closer to the surface recently.

 

In all honesty, _everything_ with him had been simmering just beneath the surface for the past few weeks. He hadn’t said anything, but she had seen it – he had been quiet, reserved; distant in a way that she couldn’t quite explain. He hadn’t pulled away from her, not really, but there was just _something_ …

 

Something was building in him; a storm brewing beneath that coolly composed exterior. She had seen glimpses of it on his face, in his eyes when he didn’t think she was looking, but she had kept her concerns to herself. Wanting to draw him out was one thing…knowing how to do it with any kind of success or finesse was something else entirely and she wasn’t about to let her ineptitude fuck up what little peace they had managed to scrape together.

 

Beneath the table – with the source of so many of their problems standing suddenly so near at hand – Khan pressed his foot against hers once more, the gesture at once both welcome and remarkably reassuring. It felt good; refreshing even, that reminder of their camaraderie, tenuous though it might be. Duval, whose heart had leapt up into her throat, felt herself relax just the tiniest bit, knowing that Khan was right there with her. _With her_ , not just in the obvious way but in so many other ways that had nothing to do with proximity – though, surrounded as they were by prying eyes, she was very, _very_ careful not to let any of that show on her face.

 

She could hear Marcus’ steps as he walked further into the room, not stopping until he was just behind her – behind _them_ – standing between their chairs, close enough that she could see him in her peripheral vision. “Well?” Duval could see him cross his arms over his chest, could hear the bite of displeasure in his voice. Glancing across the table at Reynolds, watching him go absolutely _ashen_ , she felt a small twinge of sympathy. She knew better than most – especially of late – exactly how it felt to be on the receiving end of the Admiral’s uncompromising glare. “Don’t stop now, son. I’d really like to know what I wouldn’t be _stupid enough_ for.”

 

There was no other word for it…Reynolds _floundered_. All of his hubris, all of that bluster and brass he had thrown at Khan only moments before, had deserted him entirely. Now the object of Marcus’ steady scrutiny, he shrunk into himself, eyes wide and nervous. “I…I’m so…I apologize, Admiral. I was…it was just…”

 

_Oh, for fuck’s sake_.

 

“Lieutenant Reynolds simply has some concerns about the legalities of Commander Harrison’s newest weapons concept, Sir,” she cut in, sending Reynolds a warning look when his eyes shot to hers. “He may not have phrased those concerns in the most constructive way, but I’m sure he meant no insult, Admiral.”

 

Thankfully, Reynolds was far smarter than his behavior suggested he was – he was nodding his agreement before she even finished talking. “No, Sir…no insult. I meant absolutely no insult _at all_ …”

 

“Jesus Christ,” Marcus muttered under his breath. “Reynolds…enough. Take a breath before you pass out.” He leaned forward, reaching out and pulling the PADD Khan had been presenting off of toward him, humming speculatively as he flicked through the schematics. “I know you’ve kept an eye on the statutory compliance and diplomatic defendability of Harrison’s projects from the get-go, Duval. I assume you’ve vetted this design as thoroughly as all the rest?”

 

She dipped her head. “I have, Sir. The Commander and I examined the language of all applicable treaties and mandates extremely thoroughly. We’re fully confident that the design of these torpedoes would stand up to even the most rigorous regulatory inquiry, let alone the standard weapons approval process.”

 

“Well then, that’s good enough for me,” Marcus declared plainly, the apparent sincerity in his tone shocking Duval as she watched him set the PADD back down on the table. He took a step back, turning toward Khan. “I like what I see so far on these, Harrison. Excellent work.”

 

She couldn’t see his face, but there was that same… _sincerity_ …in his voice. He sounded…

 

He sounded like he _meant_ it.

 

_What in all hell?_

 

Duval snapped her eyes away from Marcus’ back, directing them at Khan warily. She didn’t know what game the old man was playing, but she knew she didn’t like it. If the rigidness of his posture and the tension sharpening his jawline to a knife’s edge were any indication, Khan was even less pleased with this new version of Marcus than she was.

 

_Reign it in_ , she urged him from inside the confines of her own head, praying he would somehow get the message. _Don’t let him get to you._ _Come on, Khan…don’t let him win before we’ve even started playing the game._

After a long moment, Khan slowly turned his head to look up at Marcus, lips pulling back in a smile so toxic that Duval was amazed it didn’t melt off his lips. “I am confident, Admiral,” he said in a voice that somehow managed to sound both earnest and acerbic in equal measure, “that you are well aware of precisely what your approbation means to me.”

 

Of all the ways she could imagine Marcus responding to that – of all the ways she had seen him react to Khan’s blatant effrontery in the past – what he did next left her even more uneasy than she already had been.

 

Marcus… _laughed_.

 

He laughed long and loud. “Christ, Harrison…it’s good to have you on board. If only I had about seventy more just like you!” He reached out then, clapping a hand on Khan’s back in what looked very much like good-natured affability. “Just _imagine_ ,” he said, and though the tone hadn’t changed, Duval could feel the warning in the words, “what I could do if I did.”

 

“Have a care what you wish for, Admiral.” Khan’s smile widened. “I assure you – you’ve not yet seen what _one_ of me can do.”

 

Duval was on full alert, almost perched at the edge of her seat – ready to jump up and intervene in an instant if things took a turn for the worse. It was clear that there was a conversation within a conversation going on and while she suspected she knew what they were _really_ talking about, she knew that now was certainly not the time to worry about that. There were dangerous currents flowing between the two men; far more dangerous than it had been in a long time. In fact, not since that very first day in Marcus’ office in London had it felt quite like _this._

 

“And I assure _you_ , Commander – I’ll be keeping that well in mind,” Marcus said with a nod before stepping backwards and speaking to the room at large, still smiling ear to ear. “Now, I think I’ve kept you from your meeting long enough, so I’ll let you get back to it. Duval…” he turned to face her, the smile on his face shifting, all the hard edges softening just the slightest bit, “I’d like a word, but as I’ve only just arrived on-site, I’m afraid I’ve got a full day of meetings scheduled. Would you mind coming by my office tomorrow…say 1100? I’ve got an hour free then.”

 

What…he was…was he...

 

Was he… _asking_?

 

Trying very hard not to let her confusion show, Duval nodded. “Of course, sir. 1100. I’ll be there.”

 

“Fantastic. I’ll see you then.” He moved away from her toward the door, calling out as it slid shut behind him. “As you were, ladies and gentlemen. Keep making me proud.”

 

For a moment, there was silence. Just as Duval was beginning to shake off not only the surprise of Marcus’ sudden appearance, but the oddness of it as well, Khan shot to his feet, sending his chair skidding out behind him. “Lieutenant Duval, if you would be so kind?” He didn’t wait for a response once he had asked the question, just slid the PADD over in front of her before turning and stalking out the door.

 

Duval, running on autopilot, reached out and grabbed the PADD. Looking up, she surveyed the room, all eyes now trained unerringly on her. She looked back down at the PADD, then back up and around again. “Oh to hell with this,” she growled, then stood up, shoving everything that Khan had left behind into the center of the table. “Figure it out for your damn selves.”

 

Then she was up and out of the room, hot on Khan’s heels.

 

* * *

 

 

Several hours later, as she hurried up and down corridors and searched rooms she had never even been in before, Duval was working very hard at _not_ panicking.

 

She didn’t know where Khan was – and she had looked _everywhere_.

 

He had been long gone by the time she made it out of the conference room so she had headed straight to their quarters, assuming that she would find him there, fuming and cursing as he stalked up and down the room. However, the only thing she had found there had been his communicator, sitting forlornly in the middle of the little kitchen table. He’d had it with him earlier – she remembered seeing it hooked to his belt – and seeing it lying there, in so obvious a place, she had felt the first, tentative tingle of unease. He had clearly been there and then left again immediately; dropping it where he had, he’d _meant_ for her to find the communicator.

It was, she knew, a message. One that said, quite emphatically, _‘Leave me alone.’_

 

To which her silent and equally emphatic response had been, ‘ _Not a chance in hell_. _’_

 

So she had spun around and marched right back out into the corridor. She hadn’t even bothered checking the lab; if he didn’t want to be found, he certainly wouldn’t go there. Not knowing where else to start, she had checked the Mess and the Officer’s Lounge, just so that she could mark them off the list. When both of them had, as expected, turned up nothing, she had turned her attention away from the busier portions of the station.

 

She hadn’t allowed herself to worry, not at first. But then, slowly but surely, as she was confronted with room after empty room and space after deserted space, fear began to snake a twisted path up her spine. As time went by and she began to run out of even remotely plausible places to search, a sizable chunk of her concern had begun a slow migration, up from her stomach and into her throat. Now, it sat heavy in both and Duval decided that when she _did_ find him – because she would, because it was a goddamn space station and there were only so many places he could _be_ – she was going to kill him, superhuman strength and resilience be damned.

 

She was creative; she would _find_ a way.

 

Ducking back into their quarters to regroup, she headed straight for his room. Maybe there was something in there, some clue as to where he might be. It was a long shot, but at that point, she wasn’t about to overlook any possibilities, slim or not. If there _was_ anything of use in his room, it would undoubtedly be extremely well hidden. Not that she cared – she would tear the whole damn room apart if she had to and if he didn’t like it, he could go…

 

She stopped short.

 

His door, closed when she had left earlier, stood open now. The lights were on, though turned down very low, giving off just enough illumination to see by. And what she saw was Khan, lying on his back on top of the thin, gray counterpane, seemingly sleeping. His bare feet were crossed at the ankle, one hand lay beside him, the other rested on his stomach atop his untucked shirt. His hair was disheveled, laying across his forehead in exactly the way she liked best and his eyes were closed, inky lashes a stark contrast to the pale alabaster of his skin. She might almost have believed that he was actually asleep, save for the fingers sketching spirals into the sheets at his side.

 

The temptation to lash out was nearly overwhelming – all of the worry she had been feeling wanted so badly to come pouring out in a raging, reproachful torrent. But something stopped her, something in his face, in the strain that lined his brow and pulled at the corners of his mouth. The same strain that she had seen in him for weeks now, coiling tighter and tauter with every passing day.

 

She might not be particularly emotionally adept, but even she knew that this – whatever it was – wasn’t something that he should be keeping locked up inside. She had held back, waited. She had tried to give him the same sort of space that he had always given her; hoping that, eventually, he would come to _her_ the way she always ended up coming to _him._

She realized something, as she stood in the doorway of his room, watching him keep his eyes resolutely shut, though she had no doubt he knew she was there. She realized that if she left it up to him, she would be waiting forever. He _wouldn’t_ come to her. Ever.

 

It hurt, that realization and she wouldn’t pretend otherwise. It stung something fierce, but she couldn’t really blame him for it. He had seen firsthand how abysmally she handled her own problems – no doubt she would be the last person he would ever want to open up to like _that_.

 

Unfortunately for him, she happened to be the only person that he _could_ open up to at the moment. Little as he might like it, he was just going to have to make do with what was available. She would have to show him that she could do this for him, _be_ this for him. He had done so much for her, drawn her out in ways that she had never imagined anyone ever could; earned her trust when she hadn’t even believed she had any to give.

 

It was a debt that she would never be able to fully repay, but she would be damned if she didn’t do everything she could to at least _try_. She owed him that much. He _deserved_ that much.

 

Eyes never leaving his face, Duval moved slowly into the room, crossing over to the side of his bed. Without a word, she eased herself down onto her right side in the empty space beside him, facing him. With her head propped on her right hand, she gazed down at him, concern painting a frown on her face.

 

Chewing on her lip, Duval wrestled with herself, wanting to say something but reluctant to ask the questions that were begging to be asked. This close, she could see just how tense he actually was; his entire body was taut with it, humming with it – a spring wound too, too tight; the wrong pressure in the wrong place and he would, without a doubt, snap. Knowing him, the backlash from that wouldn’t be pretty, so she was going to have to tread carefully.

 

“You’re a tough man to find when you don’t want to be found.”

 

Silence. His hand continued to draw shapes in the space between them.

 

His non-reaction wasn’t exactly what she had hoped for, but it was far better than she had feared. Deciding to stick with gentle and tentative for the time being, she shifted, angling herself slightly more toward him, draping her left arm over her waist, fingertips just brushing the counterpane. “I was worried. You took off out of that meeting pretty quick.”

 

Still nothing.

 

“I’m not gonna pretend to understand everything that’s going on in your head,” she said quietly, shifting her eyes away from his face to watch the movement of his fingers, the fear of saying the wrong thing sitting heavy in her stomach, “but I know a lot of this right now is because of Marcus – because he’s a prick who seems to really enjoy taunting you. Now, I know this is the kinda thing no one ever wants to hear, but you shouldn’t…you _can’t_ let him get to you. He’s just not worth it.”

 

It took her a minute to realize that his fingers had stilled. She shifted her gaze back up to find that, though he hadn’t moved at all, his eyes were now open and focused on her; directly – _intensely_ – on her. Thrown slightly by the near physical weight of that look, fighting the instinct to lower her eyes, Duval sucked in a breath and kept her eyes on his.

 

_Nothing ventured_ , _nothing gained,_ she told herself, stalwart. Determined. _If you’re ever gonna deserve his trust, you’re gonna have to earn it._

“You don’t talk about your people. You don’t really talk about anything to do with _you_ – nothing that _really_ means anything, anyway. That can’t…I can’t imagine that makes all this any easier.” She eased her hand all the way down onto the bed, palm sliding across the counterpane until she just barely brushed his fingertips with her own. “And I know I’m not anyone’s first choice for stuff like this, but…” she swallowed hard, throat suddenly dry, “…I’d listen. If you wanted to talk – about _them_ , about you…about anything really. I’d listen.”

 

He kept on watching her, his eyes as bright as she had ever seen them and Duval finally dropped her gaze, nerves getting the better of her. He still wasn’t talking…and she needed to hear his voice. Needed to hear him talk to her, even if it was to tell her to shut up because the longer he stayed silent, the more she felt the need to keep talking.

 

“Obviously, you don’t have to if you don’t want to. I’m not…I don’t mean to be pushy or anything. I just…you listened to me, so it seems only fair that I should listen to _you_.” She stopped, frowned, pained by her own clumsiness. “Not that it’s an obligation thing for me…I’m not just offering because I think I should or because I think it’s the expected thingto...to…” she stumbled over the words, eyes drawn to their now – unexpectedly – entwined hands, his elegant fingers slatting between hers, “...to do.”

 

He squeezed her hand lightly – feather-light, she knew, for him – and brushed his thumb along hers in a swift caress. Duval felt the ball of dread in her stomach lighten and she flicked her eyes back to his, feeling considerably more confident that she wasn’t overstepping any bounds. “I’d like to listen,” she said finally, quiet but sure, “if you’d like to tell me.”

 

Even after that, Khan said nothing. But he was far from silent.

 

Turning onto his side, he drew her to him, against him, releasing her hand only to snake his arms around her waist to hold her closer. Once she was pressed against his chest, he ducked his head to press a lingering but mostly chaste kiss to her lips, one that somehow managed to feel just as intimate as the far less innocent kisses they usually shared. She stared into his eyes when he pulled back – so close now, so _open_ – her heart in her throat now for an entirely different reason. After a moment of just _looking_ at her, Khan pulled her even closer, bussing another lingering and strangely passionate kiss to her forehead before tucking her snugly beneath his chin.

 

Duval, her cheek resting over his heart, listening to the mighty thump of it beating within his chest, twirled her fingers into the fabric of his shirt. “I’m certainly not complaining, but this isn’t exactly…”

 

“Sleep,” he rumbled, cutting her off. One of his hands rose to the back of her head, carefully working the tie free from her hair and releasing it from its neat chignon. He combed his fingers through the shoulder-length tresses, delicately working through any knots he found as he went, his nimble fingers occasionally drifting up to massage her scalp.

 

It was just about the most decadently delicious thing Duval had ever felt – which, given the past few months, was quite an assertion to make – and her eyes rolled shut, savoring the feeling while it lasted. “Khan…”

 

“Later,” he said, lips against her hair, the resonance of his voice sending a pleasant shiver through her. “ _Sleep_ , Rebecca.”

 

His voice was gentle yet firm – brooking no argument. Duval, who hadn’t felt the least bit tired not ten minutes past, found herself yawning, wide and jaw-cracking. Deciding there was absolutely no harm in a nap – after everything, she thought they had probably earned one anyway – she snuggled in even closer to him.

 

And within minutes, lulled by the warm comfort of his embrace and the steady cadence of his heartbeat, Duval was deeply and happily asleep.

 

* * *

 

Duval woke with a jolt, knocked sideways so hard that she nearly tumbled off the side of the bed. Working on pure instinct, she caught herself on the edge of the bed, then lay there for a moment, staring blearily into the semi-darkness. “What the hell….,” she mumbled, running a hand over her face and trying to shake off the vestiges of sleep.

 

When a large hand smacked down onto the mattress beside her, fingers clawing desperately at the covers, Duval jumped and let out a pointed curse. She sat up, hands braced behind her as she whipped her head around toward her bedmate, angry words queuing up behind her pursed lips…words that faded away into nothingness the minute her eyes fell on Khan.

 

She could tell straight away that he was still asleep. Deeply asleep too; he did not sleep often, but when he did, he slept so soundly that waking him could be a downright _chore_. This though…this wasn’t at all a normal sort of sleep for him. He was shifting restlessly, continuously – almost violently. His head rolled on his pillow, short, sharp jerks of movement; his brow was knit tightly, eyes twitching behind clenched lids while his lips moved, shaping silent words as he communed with the shades inside his unconscious mind.

 

_A dream_ , she realized, blinking away the last bits of sleep. _No,_ she amended quickly, _not just a dream – a nightmare._

Just then, with a particularly frantic jerk of his head, Khan let out a strangled shout that trailed away into an odd, hitching whine, deep in his throat. The sound of it tore at her, poignant and tragic and laced with such raw _pain_ that it made her ache to reach out to him, to comfort him. But she knew better than to throw herself at him as she very much longed to do. This was not a normal nightmare, no simple bad dream – this was a full on night terror, which required a far more delicate approach.

 

Pushing up onto her knees, Duval planted one hand on the mattress beside her for balance before reaching toward him, leaning until he was just within her reach. Gently – _so_ tentatively – she laid her hand on his forearm, her touch light but firm. “Khan,” she called his name, pitching her voice low and soothing as she rhythmically squeezed and released his arm. “It’s just a dream, Khan – wake up.”

 

At the sound of her voice, his entire body went rigid, powerful muscles flexing beneath her hand and his head snapped toward hers, though his eyes remained tightly closed. Duval’s brow drew together in a thoughtful frown as she tried to think of what to do. Knowing she should keep her distance, but not caring all that much when faced with his distress, she leaned further toward him and slid her hand slowly up his arm, over his shoulder and up to cup his cheek in the palm of her hand. “Khan…wake up.” She lifted her hand higher, brushing his hair back from his forehead. “Open your eyes and look at me.”

 

And then, like a switch had been flicked, Khan _snarled_ , a feral, bestial sound that was every inch as inhuman as he liked to pretend that he was. His face twisted, contorting into an expression of rage that was startlingly familiar. She knew that look, had seen it on his face before, _so_ long ago now. This, suddenly, was the cornered predator she had been introduced to that very first day and it sent a frisson of fear spiking through her blood. Recognizing the danger, Duval pulled her hand back and began to ease herself away from him.

 

_“No_!” He roared the word, the arm between them flinging out, palm out, as if warding off an oncoming enemy.

 

With a sound that was half grunt, half curse, Duval launched herself backwards, away from the flailing extremity, a puff of air sweeping across her cheek as it flew past without making contact. Unfortunately, she only had a split-second to be thankful for his sleep-slowed reflexes before it became abundantly clear that her own weren’t quite full awake either. She had overestimated the force necessary to carry her out of his reach – grossly overestimated.   Arms windmilling, she toppled backwards off the edge of the bed, crashing into the low bed-stand. Duval let out a strangled gasp, pain exploding across her upper back as she slammed into the edge of the little table before tumbling the rest of the way to the floor.

 

For a long moment, she stayed where she had landed, a crumpled heap on the floor surrounded by the books and papers that she had knocked off the table when she fell. She knew she couldn’t stay there; that she needed to get up, to move – the last thing she needed was for the muscles to seize up. She shifted slightly, testing – and winced. It hurt – it hurt _a lot_ – but considering the adrenaline she could feel coursing through her system, she knew that the throbbing ache she could feel all across the top of her back was going to hurt a whole hell of a lot more once the hormone dump had worn off.

 

A sharp, shocked inhale from above caught her ear and Duval’s head snapped up. When that sound was swallowed by an agonized cry, her own pain was brushed aside, utterly forgotten in the face of his. Reaching out, she grabbed two handfuls of the counterpane. Sucking in another breath, completely ignoring the sear of pain in her back, she pulled her head up over the side of the bed, holding herself there for a moment as she shifted to pull her knees underneath her and then sat back onto her heels.

 

_“No!”_

 

Khan _howled_ the word, the shock of the sudden sound almost sending her flying backwards again. Gripping tight to the bed, Duval watched as Khan went still, his face creasing into an expression of utter horror as a keening, animal cry tore its way past his lips. He shot upright mid-wail, eyes flying open as ragged, shuddering breaths wracked his entire body. After a moment of staring wide-eyed into the shadows, he lowered his head and lifted his hands in front of him – palms up, fingers splayed wide – and despite the semidarkness, she could see how they _shook_.

 

“No,” he said again, his voice cracking as he snapped his hands closed, fists clenched tight as he lifted them to his face, pressing them against his forehead, “no, no, no…”

 

Duval was frozen in place, her heart contractingat the bleak, twisting _horror_ in his voice as he kept repeating the word over and over again.

 

“Not dead,” he groaned after sucking in a jagged breath, “no…I did not… _I did not_ …”

 

_Christ_...what had he dreamt? What the _hell_ could have done _this_ to him?

 

_Make it better_ , an alarmed voice in her head screamed at her. _Don’t just sit there staring…_ do _something! Fix it!_

 

Obeying without thought, Duval tightened her hold on the counterpane and pushed up onto her knees. The extra height allowed her to reach out across the bed toward him, though her fingers hovered just short of his back, uncertainty holding her in check. “It’s…it’s ok,” she stuttered, the words barely a whisper and she hated herself just a little bit in that moment. Hated how that had sounded more like a question than a comfort; despised how she couldn’t make her fingers bridge those last few inches – she needed to be strong now, sure and strong; _he_ needed her to be.

 

She _wanted_ to be. _For him_.

 

Duval closed her eyes, took a deep breath and dug deep. “Khan…Khan, look at me!” This time, her voice was steady. It was clear. If there was still a slight tremble to it and if she couldn’t quite manage to get her shaking fingers on board, well… _baby steps._ “You’re ok. Whatever it is…it’s not real. You had a nightmare.”

 

At the sound of her voice, he went still, but then – and to her surprise – with a shiver and a sigh, he relaxed, his now open hands falling to the bed beside him and his back bowing. “ _Rebecca…_ ”

 

“It’s me, yes,” she hurried to assure him, feeling so much more certain – he had said her name like a litany, bone-deep relief thick in his voice. It gave her just enough courage to do what she couldn’t manage only moments before. Duval leaned just a little bit further, reached out just a little bit farther until her fingers rasped against his shirt, curling into the fabric and fighting back a groan as the movement tweaked her back. “I’m right here,” she said, trying to keep the pain out of her voice.

 

Apparently, she had said exactly the right thing. Khan let out the breath she hadn’t even realized he had been holding and his head fell forward, chin dropping to his chest. It took several more long, slow breaths, but she could see the way he slowly but surely began to disentangle himself from the dream that had held him so relentlessly; could see the way he was finally able to cast off the last, clinging remnants of what had clearly been one _hell_ of a nightmare. After a moment, he blew out one final, deep inhale and then slowly lifted his head. “Forgive me,” he said, the words gentle but aggrieved as he turned to look at her, “I do not know…”

 

He stopped. Stared, his expression slowly morphing from confusion to anger. “What happened?”

 

The question was hard, cold – stripped bare of any hint of softness. Duval, thrown a bit by the swiftness of his temper, looked away from him, biting at her lower lip. “You had a nightmare,” she said, slowly easing herself back from where she was half-laying on the bed, being extra careful not to let any pain show in her face. “I was trying to wake you up.”

 

Khan’s eyes narrowed. “From the floor?”

 

It sounded like an accusation and it stung; Duval could feel the burn of embarrassment on her cheeks. “Sorry if that’s a problem,” she snapped, knowing she sounded almost painfully defensive. “I didn’t realize there was a proper procedure for it. I’ll be sure to brush up for the next time you start flopping around the bed like a hooked fish.”

 

His eyes flashed, the hand closest to her clamping down onto a handful of rumpled covers. “ _Why_ are you on the floor, Rebecca?”

 

She huffed. “I _told_ you…”

 

“Stop!” Khan roared the word at her, glaring at her from beneath the fall of his hair across his forehead. “Stop _lying_ to me!”

 

Duval instinctively leaned away from the force of his fury, wincing when the movement elicited a particularly pointed jolt of pain in her back. Once it had passed, she opened her eyes and glanced up at him, hoping against hope that he had somehow managed to miss her reaction in the low light.

 

He hadn’t missed anything though and his lips pressed together in a thin, colorless line. “You are injured. Did I…?”

 

“No,” she said quickly, giving a small shake of her head for emphasis. “No, you didn’t. I was clumsy and fell off the bed, that’s all. You didn’t do anything at all.”

 

His glare never lifted as he watched her, clearly weighing her response, his eyes raking over her. “Computer,” he barked out darkly, “increase illumination by sixty percent.”

 

Immediately, the lights glowed brighter, nearly blinding after the semi-darkness of only moments before. Duval shut her eyes against the glare, head jerking to the side and triggering another spasm of pain square between her shoulder blades. “God _damn_ ,” she hissed, hands fisting in the covers, “you could have _warned_ me.”

 

Khan said nothing, but a moment later, a blaze of all too familiar heat erupted up her side and she opened her eyes to find that he was on his knees beside her, stony and silent. He reached for her without asking, his movements staccato with restrained fury though his hands when they touched her were nothing but gentle. He gripped her hips and turned her until her back faced him directly. A moment later, he was lifting her shirt, drawing the back of it up higher and higher until he had found what he was looking for.

 

As soon as he had – based on how it felt, she could only imagine how nasty the bruising must already look – he let out a low, hissing curse before dropping her shirt as if it had burned him. Twisting around as fast as she could, Duval was too late to stop his retreat; he had leapt to his feet and stalked to the far side of the room before she could get ahold of him. He stood for a moment just staring at the wall, his back to her. He ran a hand through his hair, shoving it back from his face, his fingers momentarily fisting tight into the riot of jet black, pulling harshly as he let out a heated growl.

 

“I want the truth from you, Rebecca,” he snarled. “The _full_ truth.”

 

Still on her knees, Duval sat back down onto her heels, the new position easing a bit of the ache along her spine. “I already _told_ you the full truth,” she insisted. “Despite what you so clearly seem to be thinking, you never even touched me, Khan. I dodged your arm, over-corrected and ended up falling backwards off the bed into the damn nightstand.”

 

He had begun to pace while she talked. He continued to pace after she was finished.

 

Back and forth, back and forth he went; it wasn’t a particularly large room and she was starting to feel faintly sick from all of his starts and stops. Every so often, he would glance her way, though from the vague, unfocused nature of it she guessed he was picturing her bruised back rather than her, herself. At least, she assumed he was imaging the bruise – whatever he was looking at, it certainly wasn’t _her_.

 

He had gone blank on her again, every defense he possessed locked in place and rendering him unreadable. Almost. She knew him well enough to know where to find the precious few chinks in his otherwise impenetrable armor; and because she knew where to look, knew _how_ to look, she could see at least a little bit of the feelings that he was trying to keep from her. She could see, with perfect, frustrating clarity for example, that he was in the process of shouldering every last speck of the blame for what had just happened.

 

_No,_ she snapped to herself, _not even gonna happen. Not if I have anything to say about it._

 

“Don’t you dare,” she warned him through gritted teeth. She pushed herself gingerly to her feet, ready to set the record straight before he talked himself into something truly stupid. “Don’t you _dare_ try and do what I _know_ you’re doing.”

 

“And what, precisely, am I doing?” He stopped his pacing but didn’t turn, just tossing her a sideways sneer.

 

Duval lurched to a stop at the foot of the bed, nowhere near prepared to brave the distance he had put between them – not when he was looking at her like _that_. “It looks an awful lot to me like you’re trying to make this your fault, which is, to be honest, just fucking _stupid_.”

 

His eyes flashed once more but his face snapped away from her, eyes again seeking out the walls. “Despite your rather colorful sentiments to the contrary, Rebecca,” he was still sneering but she could hear something else, hidden underneath, “I rather think, as it was _my_ violence you were running from when you fell, that the fault for your injury is, in fact, wholly and irrevocably _mine_.”

 

Chin coming up at the scorn in his voice, Duval looked at him evenly. “You’re wrong,” she declared, shaking her head harder, more definitely. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault, Khan – it was just one of those things. You weren’t trying to _hit_ me, you were just moving your arm. On top of that, you were _asleep_.”

 

“No excuse,” Khan denied, glowering at her something fierce. “I will not allow you to dismiss this…to _justify_ it. My behavior was inexcusable.”

 

“Like I said,” Duval ground out, lowering herself down onto the end of the bed, hands braced against the tops of her knees, “ _stupid._ I never thought I’d have to say this to you of all people, but you gotta stop _feeling_ and start _thinking._ How the hell are you gonna hold yourself responsible for things you did while you were _unconscious_?”

 

“I _struck at you_ ,” he shouted, glacial in his fury, “and it is through luck and luck alone that you were not injured far worse. Had I actually struck you, I could very well have killed…” he choked on the words, the stone of his expression cracking open just the tiniest bit, but even that much revealing so much gutted _horror_ that it stole the breath from her lungs. “I could so _easily_ have killed you, Rebecca.”

Wanting so _badly_ to go to him, but suspecting he would only push her away, Duval pressed her hands beneath her thighs to keep them from reaching for him. “Maybe,” she admitted. “But you _didn’t_.”

 

“I _could have_ ,” he rasped. “So many different times…so many different ways…” His shoulders dropped, head lowering and eyes squeezing shut. After a long, tense moment of silence, he drew in a ragged breath. “I killed you.”

 

Duval blinked, arched a brow. “Evidence to the contrary…”

 

“In my dream,” he clarified, cutting over her sharply. His voice had gone cold again and when he lifted his head, his eyes open and seeking hers, she could see that he had mastered himself once more; his momentary lapse swiftly and soundly corrected. “I killed you, Rebecca. I wrapped my hands around your throat and I squeezed, just as I had done that very first day those many months ago. Only this time,” he paused, his face wiped clean of even the faintest trace of emotion; his eyes gone utterly arctic, “I did not stop. I squeezed until even the gasp and rattle of your dying breaths could not escape your throat. I squeezed until I heard the snap of your spine…and then, when your eyes had gone dark and vacant and I had squeezed every…single… _drop_ of life from your body, I stepped over your broken corpse and walked away without so much as a backward glance.”

 

 

Duval stared at him, eyes wide and, she knew, just the tiniest bit horrified. That had been...specific. Graphic.

 

Uncomfortably graphic.

 

Khan stared at her hard, for several long moments, the look on his face somehow both searching and disinterested at the same time. Eventually, he looked away from her, giving her his profile as he looked very determinedly down and away from her. “ _That_ is the sort of man I could very easily have been when I pressed you to the wall of that interrogation room, Rebecca. It is the sort of man I could have been just now. You might have been spared such an end as that on each occasion, but you cannot deny that you still suffered at my hand, whether consciously or not.”

 

Duval, slightly shaken by both the subject matter and his intensity, frowned at that, licking her lips nervously. “That’s…you can’t…” she stopped, lifted a hand to scrub at her eyes, shifting her shoulders in pained discomfort. “You’re still trying to take the blame for things you didn’t _actually_ do,” she said finally. “It was a dream, Khan. A fucking _disturbing_ dream, yes…but still just a dream.”

 

He snapped his head back toward her, eyes no less wintry. “I have not said that I found it disturbing in the slightest.”

 

Well. He really was bound and goddamned _determined_ to play the villain of this piece. It was disheartening and, quite frankly, hurt just a little bit more than she would have liked it to. She didn’t for a minute believe he had gotten even the slightest bit of enjoyment out of that dream…but it was slightly upsetting how _good_ he was at pretending otherwise. For a moment, she was tempted to give him exactly the reactions he was so clearly desperate for, but then she remembered the horror that she had glimpsed so quickly – the shame that he had not _quite_ been able to hide.

 

No. She wouldn’t let him do this. Not to them. More importantly, not to _himself_. It was her turn to pull him back; _her_ turn to keep _his_ self-destructive coping mechanisms at bay. She crossed her arms over her chest, pinning him with an uncompromising scowl. “Considering you practically launched yourself out of the damn bed to get _away_ from what was going on in your head, I don’t actually need you to say that you found it disturbing – I _know_ you did.”

 

“That does not change the fact that it was _my_ mind that conjured the scenario; _my_ mind that envisioned you dead at my feet.” He turned toward her, arms locking behind his back. His shoulders were squared, his head held high and his face a stone-carved caricature of indifference. “They say there is truth in dreaming, Rebecca. If that is the case, what must _this_ truth be?”

 

Duval’s eyes just about rolled right out of her head. “Oh, well _clearly_ it means that you want to murder me. That’s what you’re suggesting, right?” She leaned forward carefully, propping an elbow on a knee, completely done with this particular line of bullshit. “You want to know what _I_ think, Khan? I think that dream had absolutely nothing to do with _me_ at all. I think that dream has everything to do with whatever that was you and Marcus were doing earlier. I think you want nothing more than to wrap your hands around _him_ and squeeze until he pops, but you know you can’t.”

 

As always, he had begun to bristle at the very _mention_ of Marcus. His arms had dropped from behind his back, curling into fists at his sides and the muscle along his jaw ticking as he fought to keep his expression from going dark. “And you believe,” he said slowly, “that _you_ are the obvious surrogate for my ill intent?”

 

“Of course I am,” she said with a shrug and a shake of her head, as if it really was the most obvious thing in the world. “You’ve always been quick to equate me with Marcus – why should that be any different when you’re sleeping?”

 

Khan’s head jerked backwards, his brow furrowing as he looked at her as if he had never seen her before. Duval looked right back at him, careful to keep her expression open, sincere. He had to see that it was ok; that she _understood_.

 

“It’s ok, you know,” she said when it became clear he wasn’t going to say anything. “Your situation being what it is,” she paused, uncomfortable as ever with the particulars, “well…I don’t blame you for wishing violence on anyone even a little bit at fault. I doubt I’d feel any different if the situation was reversed.”

 

Looking away sharply, Khan closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. “So sympathetic,” he bit out, “so _accepting_.” His twisted to look at her over his shoulder, his icy defenses evaporating, burned through entirely by churning, molten wrath. “And ultimately so entirely mistaken. You know _nothing_ , Rebecca Duval. You comprehend _nothing_.”

 

Caught off guard by this lightning quick transformation from unyielding stone to raging inferno, Duval shrunk backwards. “Khan…”

 

“There is, however, one point upon which you were stunningly correct.” He showed her his back once more, presented her with the uncompromising expanse of his shoulders, the regal line of his neck. “I _hate_ Alexander Marcus more than I ever imagined it possible to hate another soul. He has taken my people, hidden them from me so completely that even _I_ cannot find them, though I have scoured every network, every server, every _file_ of Section 31’s archives!”

 

Storing that information for later – it certainly explained why he had been wreaking such obvious havoc on their systems; she had known he had to have a larger purpose – Duval very quickly realized that she had done something wrong, said _something_ wrong. Somehow, she had provoked his anger when she had set out to do nothing more than offer aide. She had been trying so hard to _help_.

 

She should have known better.

 

“You know I’m sorry for that,” she said quietly, fingers twisting nervously in her lap. “I’ve always been sorry for that.”

 

If he heard her, he didn’t acknowledge it, caught up as he clearly was in the flood of his own vitriol. “I was a _King_ ,” he spat, and she could tell that he was talking more to himself than he was her. “I ruled a larger swath of the planet than nearly any who had come before me, led an army that would have ruled the entire _world_ had circumstances been different. Here, I am nothing. Here, I have been reduced to _this_ – a servant to _his_ cause; a slave to _his_ whim. Marcus has made my life his playground, manipulating me at will, taunting me at leisure, knowing all the while that I can do no more than bend my head in submission because he possess that which I desire most.”

 

He paused, breathed deep, his upper body rising and falling with the rhythm of it. “There is no corner of my life free of him, no place I may go to escape him,” his voice now was quieter, but no more comforting – not when it was so _thick_ with bitterness. “And now, he seeks to use _you_ against me as well – to realize the strategy that he set in place the day he brought us together. Even here, his shadow intrudes, tainting what small measure of peace I have found.”

 

Another deep inhale. Another deep exhale.

 

“Yes, you were so very right about one thing, Rebecca. I want to kill Alexander Marcus,” he said, the bitterness giving way to determination. “If given the opportunity, I _will_ kill him. And I shall, I promise you, _revel_ in it.”

 

 

Duval, staring at the carpet now because she hadn’t been able to keep looking at him, felt like she had been gutted; like he had shoved a red hot knife into her chest and cut out every part of her that had been foolish enough to try…silly enough to _hope_. His words rung in her ears, danced before her eyes.

 

_And now, he seeks to use you against me as well._

_…use you against me as well…_

_…use you against me…_

So that was that then. She had the answer to the question she had never wanted to ask but hadn’t been able to ignore – what exactly was she to him?

 

The answer – a burden. A living, breathing burden whose explicit purpose from the very beginning had been to advance Marcus’ agenda. He had not forgotten… _would_ not forget. Oh, he cared about her, she knew he did, but he certainly didn’t _want_ to. He had just made that much abundantly clear.

 

Oh _Christ_ …she was going to cry. She could feel the burn of the tears and she fought mightily against it, blinking fast and hard.

 

She didn’t want to cry. Not here. Not in front of him.

 

“I’m gonna go,” she croaked, her voice barely recognizable to her own ears. “I’m gonna…I’ve got to…”

 

_Don’t try to talk_ , she chided herself. _Just get out. Get out now before you make an even bigger fool of yourself._

Duval shot to her feet, eyes remaining fixed on the floor. She didn’t look at him. Wouldn’t look at him. _Couldn’t_ look at him. Her back protested the clumsy, lurching movement vehemently, but she barely even noticed, numb to everything except the searing heat of the tears that were beginning to leak down her face despite her efforts.

 

A sound caught her ear, drew her attention and her eyes drifted up of their own accord, seeking him out though she could barely see him through the blur of her tears. He had turned around, that much she could tell. It had sounded like he had said her name, but it didn’t matter if he had.

 

If that was how he really felt…then it didn’t matter at all.

 

With that thought scorching a path through her brain, Duval turned away from him and started across the room. She was crying in earnest now and furious with herself for showing that kind of weakness, furious with him for making her weak in the first place.

 

 

“You cannot run away from me, Rebecca,” he called after her and there was something in his voice…he sounded almost…panicked? Was that right? Was that even possible? Whether it was or not, the incongruity of _that_ tone in _his_ voice was enough to at least give her pause; to slow her determined steps. His next words, spoken with that same desperate edge, brought her to a halt entirely. “You stayed through the worst – you _smiled_ through the worst. You cannot run away now over a misunderstanding.”

 

“What was there to misunderstand?” She was at the door, close enough now to touch, her head bowed. “I thought you were pretty clear about everything.”

 

“ _Please,_ Rebecca…”

 

His voice was closer now, just at her back – she could feel the warmth of him up and down her spine. He reached out, tentative hands wrapping tight around the flare of her hips, drawing her backwards into that warmth, enfolding her. “You must listen to me.” She felt him lean down, brush a feather-light kiss between her shoulder blades, before straightening and pressing his forehead against the back of her head, his lips brushing her hair. “You said that you would listen…”

 

One last tear welled from the corner of her eye and escaped, chasing after those that had come before it. Duval reached up and brushed it away impatiently and then dropped her hands back to her sides. She couldn’t say no to that – she couldn’t say no to _him_ – and there was no point in pretending otherwise.

 

“Fine,” she said, sniffling away the last of her tears. “I’m listening.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I solemnly swear that I shall do my best to get the next chapter out in less than two weeks. No promises though – it’s summer, school is out and my writing time comes and goes at the whim of my kiddos. In the meantime, Happy 4th to all my US readers. May your fireworks be plentiful! ;)


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing, save for the things that belong to me.
> 
> A/N: So…I’m really glad I didn’t promise less than two weeks, since it’s now been just about three. I am so, so sorry for the delay, but the past couple of weeks have been an exercise in patience for me. And even more so for my beta. It’s a good thing she’s my sister, otherwise, I might be in trouble right now! Anyway…here’s the next chapter. Hope it’s worth the wait!
> 
> As always, thank you to all who have read/left kudos/reviewed! Extra special thanks to my beta, Xaraphis, for not only being awesome but for having the patience of a saint! ;)

_“I’m listening.”_

The words hung in the air between them, though neither moved. Finally, Khan lifted his head, only to lean even closer, wrapping himself even further around her, his arms sliding around her middle – his touch gentle, delicate and ever mindful of her injured back. “You will not run.” He hummed the words against her neck, the syllables shaped with such a curious mixture of command and plea that she couldn’t decide if it was meant to be an order or a question. “When I let go, you will stay...you _will not_ run…”

 

“I said I’m listening,” Duval repeated, eyes closed now as she tried very hard to find some kind of equilibrium – something he was making it very difficult for her to manage.   Frustrated and almost painfully confused by him and all of his emotional toing and froing, she clenched her fists at her sides, trying very hard to sound controlled and collected rather than desperate and needy. “So how ‘bout you let me go and start giving me something to listen _to_.

 

The words snapped off her tongue, each one bitten off and sounding far angrier than she had intended and she felt him tense up even more than he already had been.

 

“You are angry,” he said, pressing his lips against her neck though he did not actually kiss her. “Why must you always hear the worst possible meaning in every word I say to you?”

 

He sounded… _sad_. Genuinely _hurt_. Her frustration ratcheted up even higher, directly proportional to the sweeping urge to turn around and throw her arms around his neck that she only just managed to quash. Ignoring the shriek of discomfort from the bruised and swiftly stiffening muscles across her upper back, she tipped her neck sharply away from the perilous thrill of his touch, wishing with all her might that she _was,_ in fact, pissed off at him. It would have served him right, going around, scorching her in one breath only to freeze her with the next – it would absolutely serve him right if she _was_ completely pissed off at him.

 

“Maybe I wouldn’t if you’d actually _explain_ things to me.”

 

“That is precisely what I was trying to do.”

 

Any other time, she might have laughed at their ability to be so perfectly and identically frustrated with one another. But at the moment, she lacked the distance to appreciate the humor in the situation.

 

“Try _harder_.”

 

Slumping, somehow managing to curl even _further_ around her – she could feel the burn of his skin across her back, down her spine and all she wanted to do, her very first instinct, was to press back into him, to brace him; to shore him up and shoulder what burdens she could and that just… _terrified_ her – Khan let out a slow, ragged breath. That single weary exhalation hit her square in the chest even as it sent a tendril of soft brown hair dancing across her cheek. Fighting what she refused to acknowledge as a losing battle against the gentler instincts that she hadn’t even known she was capable of until _he_ had come along, Duval reached up and flicked the errant hair out of her face with slightly more force than necessary.

 

Almost as if he had been waiting for exactly that, Khan’s hand darted up and caught hers, lacing their fingers together. His other hand dropped from around her and no sooner had the warmth and weight of him disappeared before she could feel a tug on her hand. Turning, allowing herself to be led, Duval followed the insistent pull as Khan drew her away from the door. She still didn’t look at him – not trusting herself to maintain her composure – just let him walk her all the way back to the end of his bed. Once there, he lifted his free hand to her shoulder, exerting only the lightest of pressure as he urged her to sit back down in the same spot she had vacated only moments prior.

 

As soon as she was settled, he was back on the other side of the room, pacing once more, his hands raking heatedly through his hair. Duval finally let herself look at him again, hands flat on the bed, fingertips tucked beneath the outside of her thighs; she chewed at the inside of her lip, waiting as patiently as she could for him to say something.

 

Finally, he turned to face her, expression fierce. “You believe that I blame you for what has been done to me,” he paused, swallowed, “and to my people.”

 

“No, I don’t,” she said quietly, proud of herself for not flinching, for keeping her expression passive. “I don’t think you blame me for it, Khan. I think that you _resent_ me for being part of the machine that’s responsible for what’s happened to you and your people. Blame and resentment are two very different things.”

 

That threw him; the frown that creased his brow told her that loud and clear.

 

“I do not…”

 

“You do,” she argued, cutting across him. “You said it yourself not ten minutes ago…I’m just another way for Marcus to manipulate you. I’m just one more tool that he uses against you. And before you get indignant…it’s fine. I understand why you would feel that way because, let’s face it, it’s _true_.”

 

If she’d thrown him before, now he looked positively aghast. “I knew that you had misunderstood me,” he said, something miserable in the flatness of his voice, “but I had not imagined you could have so thoroughly misread the intent of that particular confession. Rebecca…when I despair of Marcus using you against me, it is for _your_ sake and your sake alone.”

 

Now it was her turn to frown. “Why would you…”

 

Before she could get the sentence out, he was on his knees in front of her, the distance between them erased before it had even registered in her mind that he was moving – a well-timed reminder of the rare and remarkable specimen that he was. In this position, the disparity between their heights was virtually erased, putting their eyes very nearly level with one another. Khan kept his hands at his sides, not touching her at all and though his eyes still burned fierce, there was something distinctly troubled – almost _pained_ – about the knit of his brow, the pinch of his lips.

 

“I am aware that your current beliefs have been informed by my past conduct – I have accused _you_ too often when it has only ever been Marcus that I have truly blamed for _anything_. You were, as you so astutely pointed out, merely a more convenient target for my ire. And that…” here he paused, blinked, looked away, “that is inexcusable. Petty. Weak.” He lifted his head again and she could see the self-recriminations swimming in all that beautiful blue. “I blame you for nothing, Rebecca. I resent you for nothing. You have been…”

 

He stopped once more, mouth snapping shut and then he was on his feet again, putting distance between them yet again. His back to her, he stopped just before his closet, one fisted hand lifting to rest against the door, his shoulders drooping tiredly. “Every day is a trial – has been, from the moment I was awoken. Every minute that passes…every second that ticks by…I feel the sting of what I have lost. Of what has been taken from me – kept from me.” He lifted his fist, brought it back down hard onto the closet door, the panel folding inward slightly. “I bear the weight of seventy-two souls upon my back, Rebecca; seventy-two lives, each of which is as precious to me as my own and any of which Alexander Marcus could end at any given moment. It is a heavy burden; one that even _I_ struggle to bear.”

 

Duval had never, in her entire life, felt more out of her depth than she did at that very moment. She had imagined herself to be in over her head so many times before, especially over the past few months and specifically in regards to Khan. But now, staring at him wide-eyed, scared and disconcerted, she recognized with silently gathering panic that she was utterly ill-equipped for this. Any of it. _All_ of it.

 

Worse, and most terrifying of all, there wasn’t a chance in hell that she was going to let that stop her…

 

“But you made a deal,” she said, stumbling over the words and feeling her cheeks flame. “He won’t touch them…so long as you…”

 

Khan made a noise of disbelief, shook his head, turned to look at her over his shoulder. “You are no fool, Rebecca. In my place, how much faith would _you_ place in the Admiral’s _deal_?”

 

There was only one answer to that. It wasn’t something she let herself think about often, a quiet dread, lurking at the back of her thoughts. She knew Alexander Marcus better than most – was intimately acquainted with his own particular brand of ruthless efficiency. She swallowed against the lump that now sat like a rock in her throat, but she didn’t look away from him; she wouldn’t let herself retreat now, no matter how much she might want to. “None,” she said, firmly, plainly. “None whatsoever.”

 

His expression didn’t change. There was no flash of surprise, no shock of incredulity. She had said nothing more than he already knew. Instead, after a long moment, he dipped his head toward her – a thanks, she suspected, for her raw honesty. “He lords their lives over me; a sword at my neck, used to keep me to heel. I live with the constant fear that this… _this_ will be the day that he is no longer satisfied with threats alone.”

 

The silence that followed was stilted, pregnant with a tension that Duval could feel in every bone, every muscle. She wanted to say something, to reassure him in any way that she could…but she doubted there was any real comfort that she could offer. Not in this.

 

Still…better to at least _try_.

 

“I haven’t…he’s never really said anything about them. At least, not to me,” she said haltingly, took a deep breath. “But if it would help…if you would like…I could…”

 

“ _No_.”

 

The word was harsh, emphatic. It stole the words she had been about to say from her lips and left her frowning, a little bit hurt by so harsh a rejection to such a well-meant offer. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

 

“It does not matter what you were going to say,” Khan shot back, turning to face her fully, fire in his eyes yet again. “You will do _nothing_. You will say _nothing_. You will keep yourself as far removed from _this_ as you possibly can.”

 

The hurt only grew with that, an ache in her chest and a throbbing in her head. Despite herself, her eyes dropped from his. “Right. Bad idea. Sorry. I’d probably just make things worse.”

 

“You would,” Khan agreed, and the ache began to spread, radiating out until she could feel it in the tips of her fingers, clenched in the covers of his bed. “You would undoubtedly make things worse, Rebecca. You would make things far, _far_ worse for _yourself_ and that is something that I cannot – that I _will not_ – allow you to do. Not anymore.”

 

Duval’s head jerked up, surprise tempering the ache ever so slightly. “What do you…you’re worried about _me_?” She shook her head, chagrined. “Don’t do that. You’ve got enough to worry about. I can take care of myself, Khan.”

 

His jaw sharpened, his eyes blazing down into hers. “You risk too much, too often. So many times now, you have put yourself in jeopardy for me, Rebecca – so many times now and in so many different ways…”

 

“Stop it,” Duval almost shouted, uncomfortable with this change in the conversation. “Stop romanticizing. You make it sound like I’m some kind of saint, selflessly throwing myself to the wolves for your sake when we both know that everything I’ve done has benefitted me as much as it has you.”

 

“Indeed?” He took a step toward her, still angry but now something else as well, something at once brighter and deeper than his fury. “Three weeks ago, you risked your reputation, your career, your very _life_ to give me answers for no better reason than because I had demanded them of you. Explain to me, I beg of you, Rebecca – what benefit was there in that for _you_?”

 

She opened up her mouth to answer but he didn’t give her the chance, taking another lurching step in her direction. “ _None_ ,” he snapped. “Absolutely none, no matter how you might try to pretend otherwise. You put yourself in danger for my sake then, just as you have done every, single time you have stepped between Marcus and myself. I shudder to think how many times you have risked yourself for _his_ sake – for the _Section’s_ sake. I sometimes wonder if you possess even the tiniest _shred_ of self-preservation.”

 

Chafing now beneath what was beginning to sound far too much like a scolding for her tastes, Duval narrowed her eyes at him. “You say all that like it’s a bad thing. Like I’ve done something _wrong_ when really, you’re just criticizing me for being _loyal_!”

 

“Precisely!” Khan spun away, ran a hand through his hair, mussing it even more than it already was. “You _are_ loyal,” he said roughly. “ _Too_ loyal.” His voice now was hushed, as quiet as she had ever heard it. “I _fear_ that loyalty, Rebecca.”

 

There was a desperation wrapped around those words that tore at her, made her ache in an entirely different way than she had before, but she pushed it aside, clinging to her bristling anger. “I’m sorry but I’m a little lost here,” she said, a little bit petulant and a lot annoyed. “What the hell is wrong with being _too_ loyal?”

 

For several very long moments, Khan was silent. He stood there, back to her, his entire body rising and falling with the rhythm of his breath, each one seeming deeper and more strained than the one before. Finally, his head lifted and though he did not turn, she could feel his focus directed entirely upon her. “When I told you of my dream,” he said at last, quiet still and with a poignancy that sent gooseflesh up her arms, “you posited that your presence in it was as a more accessible stand in for Marcus – that it was nothing more than a lurid fantasy gone wrong.”

 

Perplexed by what this had to do with anything, Duval shifted restlessly, hands burrowing even further beneath her thighs in vague discomfort. “It makes sense that…”

 

“You were – and are – entirely incorrect, Rebecca. That dream was, in fact, the embodiment of my greatest fear in regards to you. You are… _so_ loyal. So dedicated. You risk too much, court danger without so much as a _thought_ for your own well-being.” He sucked in a shuddering breath, turned slowly to face her. “I could so easily be the death of you…and it _terrifies_ me.”

 

_Oh…Christ…_

Duval couldn’t move; could barely bring herself to _breathe_. His eyes…his face…there was too much truth there – too much _everything_. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. _They_ weren’t supposed to be this way. None of this was supposed to mean this much…

 

“ _Khan_ …” His name was a whisper on her lips, a plea. _I can’t do this,_ she wanted to yell it at him, scream it at the top of her lungs. _You can’t do this. We can’t do this._

If he heard the unvoiced thoughts, if he saw the alarm that she knew must be swelling in her eyes, he ignored them entirely. Instead, he began to move toward her, his steps slow, measured. His gaze – dark, fervent, _heated_ – held hers captive, refusing to let her go. “I have little enough light in my life now,” he said, quietly, _so_ intense that it stole her breath away. He stopped just in front of her, large hands reaching out to cup her now upturned face between his palms as he stared down at her. “I have lost so much – _too_ much,” he brushed his thumbs across her cheekbones, something mournful and _broken_ in his eyes. “To lose you…”

 

He sank to his knees, his right hand sliding down her face, her neck until it rested just over her heart, his eyes sliding closed as his head began to bob gently, in sync with the drumming beat she could feel in her throat. “You will not risk yourself, Rebecca. Not for me. Never again.”

 

Alarm giving way to full blown panic, Duval’s pulse skyrocketed, her vision beginning to tunnel until her entire world had narrowed to the man before her. Somewhere, from deep, deep down, words clawed their way up and out of her throat. “I can’t…I can’t promise that. You can’t ask me to promise that.”

 

His eyes remained closed, the hand still on her cheek slipping backwards into her hair, fingers molding to the curve of her skull and drawing her closer. When their noses touched, his eyes blinked open, steely determination turning his irises very nearly gray. “I am not asking; I am _telling_. Do what you must – _lie_ to me, if you must. But you will never again endanger yourself for my sake, Rebecca. _Never again_.”

 

Duval’s vision blurred and it took her far longer than it should have to realize that her eyes had filled with tears. _Damn_ this man…damn him straight to hell…

 

“I don’t want to lie to you,” she choked out, her voice tiny, her composure lying in tatters at his feet. She reached up, tentatively – petrified – and placed her hand over _his_ heart, mirroring their positions. “My whole life is lies…I don’t…I don’t want _this_ to be a lie too.”

 

Khan leaned in, lips brushing against her skin, catching a renegade tear as it slid slowly down her cheek. “No,” he murmured, dragging his lips over the plane of her face, across the line of her jaw and down the column of her neck. “Not a lie,” he whispered into the skin just above her racing pulse before closing his lips around the thrumming spot, sucking at it hungrily, greedy tongue darting out to taste. Then he slid his mouth further, the hand over her heart slipping down, sideways, fingers dancing along the curve of her breast before settling over the jut of her ribcage. “This,” he said, the tip of his nose nudging at the ridge and dip of her collarbone, “is not a lie.”

 

Duval let her eyes slip shut, torn, utterly undone and so…damn... _scared_. She laid her hands on his shoulders, sliding them up until her fingers found the back of his neck, stroking at warm skin and corded muscle alike. “I don’t want it to be,” she agreed, a hurried, hushed confession, drawn from her hesitant lips by the most unguarded affection she had experienced since her parents had died. “I don’t want this to be a lie.”

 

Khan reared backwards, breathing hard, his eyes a maelstrom of fear and fire and desperate, frenzied resolve as they bore into hers. “Never again,” he repeated, his voice gone hoarse and the hand woven into her hair at the back of her head let go, falling to land on her neck, pressing against her pulse – feeling the rush of her blood, the hum of life beneath her skin. “Say it, Rebecca. Swear to me… _never again_.”

 

They were there, on the tip of her tongue, the words that he wanted…the promise that he was demanding. It would be so easy to give them to him, to do as he’d asked and _lie_ to him. Behind that though, beneath it and all around it, was her own demand. A truth that she wanted. That she _craved_.

 

So she bit back, _hard_ , on those words, on the easy way out. Eyes wide but spine straight, she met his soul-stirring gaze with a passionate intensity to rival his own – quieter, perhaps, but no less formidable. “No,” she said, tremulous but so, _so_ sure. “I can’t promise that, Khan. I _won’t_ promise that.”

 

She braced herself, certain that her unapologetic obstinacy and entirely unrepentant refusal would anger him. To her surprise though, that didn’t appear to be the case at all. He neither pulled away from her nor pushed her away from him. He didn’t even tense up; didn’t, in fact, do anything that she had figured he might.

 

What he _did_ do, was sigh, long and deep; his eyes sliding shut as he tipped his head forward to drop his forehead to her neck, just at the base of her throat.

 

“ _Rebecca_ …”

 

A chime sounded from without, the electronic trill of the main door to their quarters singing into the dim silence. As one, they went rigid, tensing at the unexpected – _unwanted_ – intrusion though neither moved. Duval stiffened, looked toward the door of his room, dread pooling in her stomach.

 

_Please…don’t let it be Marcus_ , she begged, offering up a prayer to higher powers that she had never put even a scrap of stock in. _Not now. Not yet. Please don’t let it be Marcus._  

 

Glancing down at the dark head still resting against her breast, she lifted a hand to scratch at his scalp, half-urging, half-petting. “I should get that.”

 

Khan growled, annoyance all over him. “Must you?”

 

Loath to ruin the unexpected peace of the moment – though there was a part of her that was screaming for exactly that, desperate to put some space between them after everything that had just happened – Duval ran a finger down his neck, delighted by the shiver he couldn’t quite hide. “Yes. It could be important. It could be…”

 

“Marcus,” Khan finished for her, the name, for once, devoid of the spitting hate he habitually imbued it with. Sighing, he leaned back from her, pulled his arms away and looked directly into her eyes. “You understand now,” he said, a question without a question mark.

 

The chime chirped again, an insistence to it that she knew she wasn’t going to be able to ignore no matter how much she wanted to. Reaching out, she swept his hair back in a gesture that she was swiftly coming to think of as _hers_ , fingertips tracing the furrows of his brow, the slope of his proud forehead. “I understand,” she agreed, eyed him. “Do _you_ understand?”

 

“I do,” he said, leaning into her caress for a moment longer before pulling away from her touch and regaining his feet. He looked down at her, extending a hand, the brittleness gone from his expression though it remained serious. “Though I do not like it.”

 

Duval took his hand, letting him help her to her feet. “I didn’t expect you would. But like I told you…I won’t lie to you. No matter what.”

 

Their visitor, whoever it might be, signaled their presence a third time. Both of them turned to shoot looks of annoyance at the still closed door of his room.

 

“I would suggest,” Khan growled, “that you make haste, Rebecca – unless, of course, you would prefer that _I_ greet our guest?”

 

“I’m going,” she sighed, rolling her shoulders in an attempt to relieve some of the stiffness that was now settling deep into her muscles. “I don’t want to, but I’m going.”

 

The door chimed _again_.

 

“We will see to your back once our visitor has been dealt with,” Khan said, following behind as she began walking across the room.

 

“It’s fine,” Duval insisted, really not wanting to rehash all of that yet again.

 

“You are in pain, therefore it is not _fine_.”

 

“It’s just a bruise, Khan,” she said, dismissive, as she activated the door, stepping out into their living room as it slid open ahead of her, “it’ll be gone in a few days.”

 

Khan, who had trailed after her, stopped at the threshold of his room, his gaze a near palpable warmth at her back as she moved away from him. “Nevertheless, we _will_ see to it,” he said in that my-will-be-done tone that made her want to jump him like a skipping rope when it was directed elsewhere. When it was directed at her, it made her want to jump him in an entirely different – and far less pleasant – way.

 

Opening her mouth to remind him just how well she tended to take orders outside of her professional life, Duval was cut off by the door squawking at her yet again.

 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” she snarled, “someone better be _dead_.” She was at the door now, her finger hovering over the button to open it, pausing to glance back at him in all his rumpled glory. “You just gonna stand there like that?”

 

Khan grinned, a feral glint in his eye and crossed his arms over his chest. “Most definitely.”

 

_Pick your battles,_ she reminded herself. _Pick. Your. Battles._

“Suit yourself,” she said with a long-suffering huff. She turned back around and reached out to press the button, the door sliding open to reveal the handsome and currently very decidedly _not_ smiling face of a none-too-pleased Facility Commander. Duval frowned, even more annoyed now than she had been before. “Vazquez,” she acknowledged blandly. “Think you could’ve been a bit more impatient if you’d tried?”

 

“I need to speak with you, Lieutenant,” he said in lieu of a greeting, completely ignoring her sourness.

 

“Can it wait? I’ve got a few things…”

 

“ _Now_ , Duval,” he said, insistent. “Let me in.”

 

She sighed, irritated, but stepped aside anyway. “By all means, Commander…come on in.”

 

The words were barely out of her mouth before Vazquez barreled past her, stopping short when his eyes landed on Khan. Khan…who was leaning against the door jamb, arms crossed and eyes sharp, predatory. How the man could manage to look that dangerous with messy hair and bare feet was beyond her…

 

“Commander Harrison,” Vazquez offered in greeting, his voice wound as tight as the rest of him.

 

“Commander Vazquez,” Khan dipped his head in acknowledgment, not a shred of deference in the gesture. “What a very great pleasure. To what, might I ask, do we owe the _honor_ of your extraordinarily persistent presence?”

 

From behind the Facility Commander’s almost painfully squared shoulders, Duval cocked her head to the side and shot Khan a look. “ _Stop_ ,” she mouthed at him, over-enunciating the silent command without much hope that he would actually listen.

 

“I need to speak to Lieutenant Duval,” Vazquez ground out. “Alone.”

 

“Hmm…do you indeed? It is a matter of some import then?” Khan’s eyes were twin shards of ice as they locked onto the Facility Commander. “I cannot imagine that a man of your _stature_ would make such a callow spectacle of himself over anything less.”

 

_Oh goddamn it…_

Without giving Vazquez a chance to respond, Duval jumped into the conversation. “Harrison,” she barked the name warningly, completely unsurprised to see Khan’s head jerk to the side, glaring at her for the unavoidable but – to him – no less offensive use of _that name_. “I’m sure Commander Vazquez wouldn’t have been quite so pushy,” and here she _did_ level a look in the Facility Commander’s direction, annoyance plain on her face, “if it wasn’t something important.”

 

Vazquez, stone-faced, looked back and forth between Khan and Duval before settling his eyes back on hers. “You’re a half hour late for your 1100 meeting with Marcus. Since you aren’t answering your communicator, the Admiral sent me to see what the problem is. So yes,” he snapped, “I _imagine_ ,” and here he swiveled his gaze around to Khan, eyes narrowing, “that it is of definite _import_.”

 

Her face slowly leaching of color as Vazquez spoke, Duval reached down to her belt on reflex, finding nothing but the clip that held her apparently missing communicator. At the same time, her eyes flew up to the time display on the wall, her stomach turning over uncomfortably at the 1137 glowing on its face. “Oh…oh shit,” she muttered, instantly on high alert. “God…I’m…I’m coming…just let me…”

 

She looked down at herself, taking quick stock. She was, at least, dressed, though her clothes clearly bore the signs of having been slept in – _oh well_ , she dismissed, _it’ll do_. The sight of her socked toes peeking out from beneath her black pants made her frown. Her boots were off. Why were her boots off? She had fallen asleep with her boots _on_ …

 

“Rebecca…”

 

And her hair…she reached up, ran her fingers through the chestnut strands, finding knot after knot…she shuddered to think what her hair looked like.

 

Duval looked up to see Khan, her boots in hand, striding across the room toward her. He grabbed her hand and pulled her over near _her_ bedroom door before handing them over into to her outstretched fingers. “Where…?”

 

“Beside the bed,” he murmured, attempting to keep his words for her and her alone.

 

She bent in half, trying to hide her pain as she pulled on first one boot and then the other. “Did you…”

 

“You did not look comfortable,” he whispered hotly, then he held out his other hand, peeling away his fingers to reveal her communicator – her very broken communicator – laying in his palm. “This was also beside the bed.”

 

Duval snatched it up, flipping it open only for the two halves to come apart in her hands. “I must have landed on it when I fell,” she hissed. “God damn it…son of a bitch.”

 

“Problem, Lieutenant Duval?”

 

She and Khan looked up at the waiting Facility Commander in unison, near identical looks of irritation glaring out from behind green and blue alike. “Not at all, Commander Vazquez,” she responded, shoving the now useless bits of electronic flotsam back into Khan’s hands. As soon as hers were free, she reached up and began gathering her shoulder-length tresses into a one-handed ponytail, gritting her teeth as her back screamed at her. “Did you find…?”

 

Khan’s hand appeared in front of her face, one of her simple black hair ties pinched between two of his long fingers. She snatched it up, her eyes seeking out Khan’s as she twisted it into her hair, securing a messier-than-normal knot at the back of her head. He stared down at her, a kaleidoscope of feelings and reactions waging war in his gaze, though at the moment she was zeroed in on the encouragement her galloping heart most needed.

 

How could she have lost track of time like that? How could she have lost track of _everything_ like that?

 

_Christ_ …Marcus was going to murder her. He was going to absolutely _eviscerate_ her.

 

“Sometime today would be good, Duval.”

 

Khan’s eyes snapped up and away from hers, staring down Vazquez over her head with a look of such vicious contempt that Duval reached out and laid a hand on his chest. “Please, don’t,” she said quietly, then turned, addressing Vazquez this time. “Ready when you are, Commander.”

 

Vazquez looked back and forth between them yet again before turning away, making a sweeping gesture toward the door. “After you then, Lieutenant.”

 

With one last look at Khan, seeking and finding a little extra encouragement, Duval took a deep breath, cocked her chin up and walked out the door with as much dignity as she could muster. After a few steps down the corridor, she saw Vazquez move up to walk beside her out of the corner of her eye and couldn’t help but give him a quick read. As she had suspected, Rafael Vazquez – handsome, overachieving, smooth-operating Rafael Vazquez – was _not_ a happy man at the moment. Striding along beside her, eyes forward, jaw clenched, he looked very much like he wanted to hit something. _Hard_.

 

Most people, she knew, would do something to break the ice. Say something to de-fuse the situation. Luckily, she wasn’t most people and she was perfectly content to toddle along beside him in complete and total silence, ignoring all those silent distress signals that he was letting off like steam out of a boiling pot. If he had a problem, he could damn well open his mouth and tell her about it; she certainly wasn’t going to _invite_ his confidence.

 

She already had her hands well and truly full on _that_ front, thank you very much.

 

Side-eyeing him for another moment or two, Duval finally just gave a mental shrug and settled in for the duration, trying to think of anything other than the conversation – and in all likelihood, the _punishment_ – that was most likely waiting for her at the end of this little stroll. Of course, as soon as she relaxed, that was the moment Vazquez’s pot decided to bubble up and boil _over_.

 

“What is going _on_ with you, Be… _Lieutenant_?” He spat the words out, hurling them at her, heedless of – eager for? – the damage done when they struck their target. “What the hell are you _thinking_? _Are_ you even thinking? ”

 

Everything that had happened from the minute he walked through their door had been an utter and unquestionable debacle. She had been caught off-guard; unprepared in a way that she, of all people, never _ever_ was. There was so _much_ going on in her life, in her head – she had screwed up all over the place of late, in little ways and big ways alike – that she was, quite honestly, running on emotional empty.

 

She felt completely drained of every drop of inferential intuition and empathetic forbearance that she possessed. Which meant, in short, that she didn’t know exactly what Vazquez was ripping her head off over and, more importantly, she didn’t even care. Not even a teeny, tiny bit. “I can tell you exactly what I’m thinking right now, Commander, but I really don’t think you want to hear it.”

 

Vazquez shook his head, lips pinched white with fury. “Damn it, Duval…I’m serious. _Where_ is your head at? No,” he snapped, shaking his head and sounding thoroughly disgusted, “don’t answer that. After that little scene back there, I know _exactly_ where your head is at. And I can’t believe that you, of all people, would…”

 

“Stop,” Duval said, her tone dark and dangerous enough that she suspected that even Khan would have been impressed. “I really wouldn’t say another word if I were you.”

 

“You can’t just…”

 

She stopped, whirled on him, glancing quickly up and down the corridor, glad to find that there was no one within immediate earshot. “I said _not another word_. You’ve got no idea what the hell you’re talking about, Vazquez. You don’t know even a single, goddamned thing about me or the state of my head!”

 

“I know that you’re floundering,” he shot back at her. “ _Floundering_! Watching you back there…that was so far from the Rebecca Duval that I’ve always known that I barely even _recognized_ you!”

 

Duval spun away and started walking again. “Your problem,” she spit out, “not mine. The Rebecca Duval that _I’ve_ always known certainly doesn’t need _your_ validation.”

 

“And how about Marcus’ validation? Do you need that? Or is John Harrison’s the only voice you’re capable of hearing anymore?”

 

She wasn’t going to stop. It wasn’t worth stopping. “Don’t talk to me, Vazquez. From now on, unless its business related, don’t even bother to fucking talk to me.”

 

“I _do_ have business to discuss with you,” he seethed. “I was trying to get in touch with you _before_ you were late for your meeting. I had my own meeting with Marcus this morning and there are…,” he paused looked around again, lowered his voice, “…there are things I need to tell you. Things you need to _know_.”

 

Duval kept her eyes forward and her feet moving – they were very nearly there now. “Not interested,” she barked. “You’ve told me more than enough for one day, thanks.”

 

“It’s _important_ , Duval. Marcus has plans…”

 

“You don’t say.”

 

Vazquez made an impatient gesture, frustration pouring off him. “Goddamn it, Duval… _listen_ to me!”

 

Only steps from Marcus’ office door now, she spun around and stopped the Facility Commander with a hand pressed firmly against his chest. “I know how that looked back there and I know what you’re thinking,” she said, proud of how very reasonable she sounded, “but you’re _wrong._ I’m not blind, oblivious or stupid and I’m well aware that there’s a lot going on right now – likely more so than even you are. Trust me when I tell you, Vazquez…you don’t need to tell me about Alexander Marcus. I know him better than you do and I sure as shit _understand_ him better than you do, so don’t for a minute think that I need you to tell me that he has _plans_. If you’re surprised by that information, then I think it’s safe to say that you’re the one with the problem here…not me.”

 

Vazquez was breathing hard, his fists clenched and his face turning a shade of red she had never seen on him before. “Not like this,” he forced out from between his teeth, still trying despite his obvious upset. “I’ve never heard him plan like _this_ before.”

 

Duval arched her brow at him. “That bad, huh?”

 

He nodded sharply, a rough jerk of his head. “Worse.”

 

She tilted her head to the side, looking up at him, measuring. “You’re surprised?”

 

Another nod. “I am. I really am.”

 

His expression had smoothed slightly – he thought she was softening, preparing to listen. He really didn’t know her at all. Duval shook her head slowly, pulled her hand away from his chest. “Then you need to pay closer attention,” she said, her voice bland but still strangely cutting, “because there’s no excuse for anyone as high ranking as you are to be that ignorant, Vazquez. Now leave me alone…I’ve got nothing else to say to you.”

 

Stone-faced once more and so furious that he was nearly vibrating from the force of it, Vazquez didn’t answer, just stared at her for a long moment before turning on his heel and stalking back the way they’d come. Duval watched him walk away for exactly two heartbeats, but then she turned around, shoving everything about Facility Commander Vazquez and his over-familiar attempts at camaraderie from her mind.

 

At the door to the suite that housed not only Marcus’ Io office but his private quarters as well, she stopped, took a deep breath and then activated the door to let herself into the anteroom. The grim-faced but otherwise unremarkable young man that sat behind the glass desk in the center of the room – Marcus’ newest PA, she guessed; the man tended to go through them like tissue paper – stood immediately upon her entrance, tapping away furiously at the PADD in his hand.

 

“Agent Duval,” he greeted, his voice as forgettable as the rest of him and Duval wondered how long it had taken him to learn how to do that, to make himself so completely a part of the background that it was easy to forget he was even there. It was a talent all its own – one that she certainly didn’t possess. Blending in was one thing, but to be able to disappear entirely…that was a rare gift. “If you would follow me, please.”

 

Any other time, she would have been interested; impressed as she always was to see fresh-faces with real potential. But now… _today_ …she really couldn’t have cared less. Not even inclined to be particularly polite, but knowing that she needed to be, she shot the kid a quick, completely forced grin. “No need,” she offered with a wave, “I know where his office is.”

 

The kid’s expression didn’t change as he pushed his chair in and started walking toward the door on the far side of the room. “I’m to show you to the Admiral’s sitting room, Agent – not his office. I’m afraid I can’t allow you to enter that part of his quarters unaccompanied. Security protocol, you understand.”

 

Nothing; not even a flicker of personality behind any single one of those words and Duval, even more impressed, nevertheless felt her skin crawl. That level of mildness, of unaffected equanimity…it just didn’t feel natural. Not that Duval was paying him all that much attention – any thoughts on his preternatural evenness were fleeting and quickly forgotten. She had never, in her entire Section career, been shown to Marcus’ private quarters.

 

She wasn’t actually sure that she had met anyone who _had_ , aside from Carol, which hardly counted as she was his _daughter_. Marcus, for all his posturing and over the top, in your face personality, was a deeply private man. To him, business was business and personal was personal and never the ‘twain shall meet, which was why his rooms in every Section facility had always been exactly that – private. _Very_ private.

 

And yet here she was being ushered toward what basically amounted to his holiest of holies – the inner sanctum of all of his inner sanctums.

 

Section enclaves, as a rule, operated clandestinely from _inside_ already established Starfleet installations, like Mars 3 and the Kelvin Archives. Io was the exception to that rule; the only facility that belonged entirely to Section 31. As such, it afforded Marcus the sort of limitless autonomy that he was only able to taste in small doses elsewhere, hampered as he was not only by Starfleet’s rules and regulations, but also – and to an even greater extent – by the institutionalized pacifism that defined it as an organization.

 

On Io, Alexander Marcus didn’t have to pretend to be something he wasn’t, didn’t even have to pay lip service to rose-colored concepts like compassion or tolerance or mercy. On Io, Alexander Marcus didn’t answer to anyone or anything but himself.

 

On Io, Alexander Marcus wrote the rules, enacted the rules and enforced them as he saw fit – something that had never been a source of any particular concern for Duval before. But now, with her eyes open so much wider than they had ever been before, she could no longer view the arrangement with the simple, stoical approval that she once had.

 

In fact, given the nature of her current situation, the idea of Marcus as judge, jury and executioner was more than simply worrisome, it left her feeling deeply – _deeply –_ uncomfortable.

 

_You are going to have to spin like a goddamned tornado to get yourself out of this one_ , the too-often (of late) ignored voice of her most rational self drawled, dispassionate and wholly unimpressed. _Christ, woman, you’ve made a hell of a mess for yourself._

“I’ll let the Admiral know you’re here,” her escort said softly after they had halted just in front of a totally non-descript door along a hallway dotted with them. “Would you mind please waiting here for just a moment, Agent?”

 

He punched in a code on the control panel beside the door as he asked and Duval gave a shrug and a shake of her head, her expression a picture of sardonic amusement. “Do I have a choice?”

 

Mr. Personality – if he’d offered his name, she hadn’t caught it; didn’t actually care anyway – swiveled his head to stare at her, the weight of his look articulating the answer to her question without him even having to say a word. Finally, he turned away, pressed one final button on the panel. “I won’t be a moment, Agent.”

 

He slipped through the door before it had even fully opened but it snapped back shut before she could see or hear much of anything from within. Barely a minute later, the door swished back open again and the world’s drabbest man came shuffling back out. “Admiral Marcus will see you now, Agent,” he said, not a lick of a hint as to what awaited her in his eyes, voice or carriage.

 

_Useless,_ Duval dismissed, _weird, creepy and completely useless_.

 

Without another word – because honestly, what was the point? – she shoved every little bit of her dread deep, deep down and walked through the door, head held high.

 

She walked down a short hallway and then right out into a large room, her eyes immediately drawn to the windows that comprised one entire wall of the space, starting at the floor and reaching all the way up to the very high ceilings. Beyond the transparent aluminum barrier, Jupiter loomed large, a brightly lit giant filling up the entire width and breadth of the viewport. It was beautiful and Duval stood in silence for a moment, admiring the gaseous swirls of color in the upper atmosphere.

 

“It’s a hell of a view, isn’t it?”

 

Hearing Marcus’ voice wasn’t a surprise, but Duval couldn’t help but stiffen up anyway. “It is, Sir.” A particularly bright auroral flash, vivid against the muted, autumnal Jovian palette, drew her eyes up toward the northern pole and the haze of light that danced there. “A hell of a view.”

 

“The lights are bright today,” he said, relaxed, genial.

 

_Genuine?_

Duval turned, putting Jupiter’s beauty just at the edge of her vision. Much as she would have liked to focus her attention elsewhere, she knew better than to give Marcus anything but her full and undivided attention – now more than ever before. “Io must have had a spike in volcanic activity recently,” she said, nodding her head toward the show outside. “All those extra particulate emissions traveling along the plasma torus and putting on a show. Good call picking this side of the station for your view, Sir. Much prettier than Io’s sodium cloud.”

 

“Carol’s call – she’s got a much better eye for that sort of thing than I do.” He was sitting in a large, overstuffed chair, turned to face the view though he himself was looking at her. “Come sit down, Duval.”

 

There was a second, identical chair beside his. Assuming that’s where he wanted her, Duval breathed deep and walked over to the proffered seat, easing herself down into it – very, _very_ careful not to show even the tiniest flicker of discomfort, despite the ache across her shoulders. “Thank you, Sir,” she said once she had made herself as comfortable as she was likely to get.

 

Marcus waved her thanks away and they sat in silence for a long moment – a silence that was, given everything, surprisingly…comfortable. A silence that Duval wasn’t about to break herself, so she sat and she waited, eyes focused without, tracing along Jupiter’s latitudinal zones, each clearly demarcated band varying in thickness and color.

 

“Plasma torus,” Marcus said finally, a strained humor coloring the words and pulling Duval’s eyes to his face, “particulate emission.” He turned his head to meet her hooded gaze. “Sodium cloud. Khan certainly has left his mark on your vocabulary, at the very least.”

 

Maintaining eye contact, Duval didn’t let herself rise to Marcus’ bait. “Or it could be that Astrosciences was one of my favorite course studies at the Academy, Sir.”

 

Marcus scoffed, turning to look back at the viewport. “Don’t try to sell me that line, Duval. It won’t work – I’ve seen your Academy record.”

 

No question about it now, he was _definitely_ baiting her; trying to throw her off kilter. He knew her well enough to know that the more off-balance she felt, the more she was likely to reveal. Unfortunately for him, she was far more motivated now than she had ever been before. “Having mediocre grades doesn’t necessarily translate into having a mediocre brain, Sir. I wasn’t the most diligent student, I admit – doesn’t mean I didn’t learn a few things here and there along the way.”

 

The Admiral didn’t respond, just kept staring out. Eventually, Duval shifted back around in the seat herself, eyes forward once more. “You’ve had almost ten years to see that I’m far from stupid, Sir. Not that I believe for a minute that you ever thought I was to begin with – I doubt you would have recruited me if you thought I was an idiot.”

 

More silence.

 

“Recruiting you was…” Marcus stopped, shook his head, lowered it slightly. Duval held her breath, waiting, hoping for the answer to a question that she would never, _ever_ have asked herself – _why her_? But then, the Admiral blew out a breath and lifted his head once more. “You may not be an idiot, Duval,” he said instead. “But recently, you’ve been making some damn boneheaded calls.”

 

She couldn’t help it – despite knowing him as well as she did, despite knowing exactly what kind of a bastard the man sitting across from her was – she couldn’t help but feel the pinch of real remorse. “I am… _well_ aware of that, Sir,” she said, her throat tight. “No one knows better than me just how much I’ve screwed up of late.”

 

Marcus sighed and there was so much displeasure in the cadence of it – so much _disappointment_ – that it made something very young and very terrified inside of her start to tremble. “I never thought I’d have to have a conversation with this like you, Duval. From the minute you came on board, you’ve been everything a good Agent should be. But now…”

 

It felt like something was sitting on her chest, making it harder and harder to breathe. Duval kept her eyes on Jupiter, though she could no longer see it past the shadows darkening her eyes. It had been a very, _very_ long time since she had last heard that tone – that odd mixture of sadness and caring that cut like a knife and squeezed like a vice.

 

A _parent_. He sounded like a parent.

 

Like a father.

 

At that realization, Duval’s stomach promptly twisted itself into so many different knots that it took all her self-control to keep the discomfort of it off her face. _It’s a manipulation_ , she reminded herself sharply. _You know it is and you know why he’s doing it – he knows your issues better than you do yourself. Suck it up, squash it down and don’t let him hang you with your own rope!_

She twisted her hands together in her lap, fingers tangling and knuckles going white from the force of her grip. “I’m still every inch the Agent I’ve always been, Sir. Like I said, I know very well that I’ve slipped up more than once lately, but in my defense, I’ve been put in an extremely difficult situation and I’m making the absolute best of it that I can.”

 

“Well,” Marcus drawled, angling a pointed gaze her direction, “that’s _one_ way of putting it.”

 

Frustratingly, Duval could feel the faint burn of a blush steal up her cheeks. Cool façade beginning to crumble, she looked away from the Admiral once more. “I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again – this is what you _wanted_. I’ve given you exactly what you asked for and now you’re punishing me for it.”

 

“I wanted you in his _bed_ , Lieutenant – I certainly didn’t want or expect you to go and fall in love with the son of a bitch.”

 

The pairing of _that_ concept with her and Khan was like a bucket of ice water, dumped straight over her head. Shivers shooting down her spine and an odd, swooping nausea eating at her stomach, Duval forced herself up straighter – _made_ herself look at him. “I’m not in love with him,” she said, the words low, thin. “I can’t…I won’t deny that I care about him – you’ve seen that much, no point _trying_ to deny it. But I’m _not_ in love with him.”

 

“Semantics,” Marcus dismissed, equally as quiet, still so damn _genuine_ that it made her itch. “No matter what the degree, the problem is the same. Now, I’ve been doing this a long time, kiddo. Long enough to know that this kind of thing happens; it happens to the worst, it happens to the best and it happens to everyone in between. What matters, what delineates between the best, the middling and the worse is what they _do_ when and if it does happen to them.” He stopped, turned toward her, his expression clouded but fierce. “So what’s it gonna be with you, Duval? What are you gonna do?”

 

What _was_ she going to do?

 

_What the hell am I going to do?_

“I think,” she said, almost shoving the words off her tongue, “a better question is – what are _you_ going to do, Sir? Based on the last time we spoke privately, I was expecting to be handed my burn papers in this meeting.”

 

It was a weak attempt at deflection, but it was all she could come up with. Marcus had, with startling efficiency, destroyed her composure yet again. Unfortunately, she was beginning to suspect that it had far less to do with any sudden leaps in his ability and far more to do with her own rapidly evolving emotional state. Before – before all of _this_ – nothing flustered her because nothing _could_.

 

Now…

 

Things were different. _She_ was different. Strangely, she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe that was a bad thing, even with the burn of condemnation staring out at her from Marcus’s cornflower gaze.

 

“I’m not going to kill you, Duval,” Marcus denied, though his gaze had narrowed as if he was trying very hard to read her. “You’re far too useful to lose. I may not like the particulars of your little arrangement with Khan, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate what it can be made to do for us.”

 

“That’s a different tune than you were singing the last time we discussed this, Sir.”

 

“I’ll admit it,” Marcus gave a small shrug, “I overreacted, though not by much. Even then, if you’ll recall, my main issue wasn’t with your relationship, it was with the fact that you hadn’t told me about it.”

 

“And I tried to explain to you then, Sir…me not telling you had nothing to do with not wanting you to know. It had everything to do with not knowing how to tell you. That…all of that…it’s really _not_ my area of expertise, Sir, as I told you when you first suggested it all those months ago.”

 

It wasn’t entirely a lie – true, she had not wanted to tell him at all, but if she had, she certainly wouldn’t have known how to go about doing it if he hadn’t brought it up first. Hopefully, it was enough to convince him this time.

 

To her surprise, Marcus made an impatient gesture, brow furrowing. “I told you I overreacted, Duval, so just let it go. My concerns have shifted. Considerably.”

 

Sucking her lower lip into her mouth, Duval bit down on it firmly to keep her mouth under control. What the hell was he talking about now, _his concerns have shifted_? What the fuck did that even mean? Why was she surrounded by men who insisted on giving her emotional whiplash?

 

“What have your concerns shifted to, Sir?”

 

Before her eyes, his entire demeanor shifted _again_ , the harshness fading and that soft, almost _paternal_ look of concern stealing over his face once more.

 

_Oh, you bastard_ …

 

“Tell me something, Duval – how do you think this is gonna end? When it’s all said and done, when Khan has finished the work I need from him…when he has his people back…what do you think’s gonna happen then?”

 

_Oh…you unbelievable bastard…_

 

All of her fear, all of her dread from earlier, came rushing back, filling her up and setting her heart to racing in her chest. The flavor of it though, the bitter tang of it in the back of her throat, was different than before. This was more than just Marcus…this was something else entirely…

 

“I don’t understand what you mean, Sir.”

 

Marcus shook his head, the pained expression in his eyes only growing stronger. “You know exactly what I mean, Duval. We’ve already established that you’re not an idiot – you’ve thought of this, whether you want to admit it or not. When Khan Noonien Singh gets his people back…do you honestly believe there will be a place for you with him? Can you honestly tell me that you think he’ll have the _slightest_ use for you then?”

 

He stopped, leaned forward across the arm of his chair, eyes locked on hers and Duval held her breath, knowing another blow was about to fall. “Do you honestly think that he would have the slightest use for you _now_ if it weren’t for the situation he’s in? He’s alone and he’s miserable, Duval. Can you look me in the eye and tell me he would have had any interest in you if it weren’t for that?”

 

Those words, out loud…her most secret fears, given voice. Wanting to curl into herself, to hide from his words but knowing that she couldn’t, Duval sucked in a breath, blinking hard to clear away tears that she refused to acknowledge. “I don’t see what any of that has to do with…”

 

“Answer me, Duval,” Marcus snapped, all that assumed gentleness – she’d been right to call it a manipulation, she could see that now, in the flash and flare of satisfaction in his eyes – wicking away and leaving the old smugness she was far more accustomed to in his face. “Tell me the truth. You already know it – I can see it in that kicked-puppy look you’re trying so hard to hide from me. I want to hear you _say_ it.”

 

Anger; deep, abiding anger swelled up from far beneath all her fear and her mortification. Anger at this man, who could sound like he cared one minute and then reveal that he didn’t in the next. But she couldn’t show it. Not now. Not _yet_.

 

She looked away, eyes falling once more on Jupiter, on the swirling browns and reds and oranges. “I’m convenient,” she said at last, her voice carefully flat. “I’m convenient…and he’ll leave me, in the end.”

 

“Bravo, Lieutenant,” Marcus said after a short silence, sounding downright… _chipper_. It was, Duval thought, a very good thing that she wasn’t armed at that moment. “I know just how difficult that must have been for you.”

 

Not that she couldn’t kill him with her bare hands, if she _really_ wanted to…

 

“Now, I know you’re probably royally pissed off at me right now, Duval, but you have to understand…I’m doing this – all of this – for your own good.”

 

Every word out of his mouth now was like slow-dripping acid, every syllable burning her a little bit deeper. But Duval kept her head, tucked everything away and just…soldiered on. “Of course you are, Sir.”

 

“I’m making you face reality, Duval. Making you keep your head on straight…and making you see the bigger picture.”

 

She turned her head, shoulders still forward, catching Marcus eye. “The bigger picture, Sir?”

 

“The bigger picture,” Marcus affirmed once more, pushing himself up and out of his chair and walking to stand just at her side, staring down at her with a hard, uncompromising look in his eyes. “Enjoy it while it lasts. _Use it_ while it lasts.” He leaned down, his face only inches from hers. “But do not, for an instant, forget that this situation has a shelf-life. One day, it’ll be over and he’ll be gone. And where will you be _then_ , Lieutenant?”

 

She said nothing; _could_ say nothing. Just stared up at him.

 

“Remember, Rebecca Duval, where your loyalties lie. Remember who made you what you are.” Marcus straightened, glaring down at her now from his full height. “And remember who can take away everything that you have.”

 

Marcus spun on his heel, stalking across the room to a door on the far wall. “Think about that,” he called over his shoulder. “Think about all of it. And then get the hell out of my quarters, _Agent_.”

 

Then he was gone, the door closing behind him, leaving Duval sitting there, staring at Jupiter, a roaring in her ears, a burning in her throat and a slow, growing certainty expanding to fill the hollowness in her chest.

 

She couldn’t keep doing this, this tight rope walk between old loyalties and new. It was eating her alive, tearing her apart…and she couldn’t keep doing it.

 

She stared out at the swirling, shifting vista before her, but she didn’t see it. Couldn’t see anything but the sweep of unruly black hair across an alabaster forehead…the flex of elegant, grease-smudged fingers against a never-ending kaleidoscope of tools. Couldn’t hear anything but the sound of rumbling, baritone laughter…the smack of bare feet padding across the floor toward her as she fiddled with the still temperamental replicator…

 

Decisions loomed before her. Big, terrifying decisions.

 

And the time was very swiftly coming when she was going to have to make them.

 

One way…or the other…        


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing, save the few things that are mine.
> 
> A/N: I know…it’s been awhile. Apologies. First the chapter itself was being stubborn. Then my kids were being stubborn. And then, just as it started to look like the stars were finally aligning in my favor…I got sick. But the world kept turning, I got better, the chapter got written and I’m quite optimistic that I’m actually going to be able to get back to my every-two-weeks posting schedule (school starts Monday – which means a little more writing time for this Mommy).
> 
> As always, thank you to everyone who has read/reviewed/favorited/commented/left kudos. Every single one of you rock my world. Thanks to my ever-patient beta, Xaraphis – I don’t know what I’d do without your prodding.

_(six days later)_

Engineering on board the Vengeance was buzzing with activity. Several different crews of workers scurried about, hurrying to complete the preparations for the installation of the experimental warp core prototype which was scheduled to occur in three days. Duval stood silently off to the side of the room, a large, square floor panel propped against the wall behind her and a fuming superhuman snarling viciously in front of her.

 

As far as she could tell, something to do with the warp coils had been installed very – _very_ – incorrectly and Khan, shockingly enough, was somewhat less than pleased by this.

 

_Considerably_ less than pleased…

 

Wincing at each increasingly venomous insult hurled at the Engineering Corps, she eyed the time, glowing brightly on the wall across the room and winced for an entirely different reason. Khan was not a man who liked to be interrupted while he was working at the best of times…and this was _far_ from the best of times. “I know this is the last thing you want to hear right now,” she said, reluctant but resolute, “but if we’re going to make it to that warp core installation meeting on time, you’re gonna need to start wrapping up whatever it is that you’re doing.”

 

“A superfluous waste of time,” he barked, not looking up at her, “that would be much better spent correcting the gross incompetence of _your_ compatriots.”

 

“Not _my_ compatriots,” Duval denied, resignation heavy in her voice – it never boded well when he started to lump her in with the entirety of the Section, “since you and I both know that I’m about as far from an engineer as it gets. And superfluous waste of time or not, Marcus wants to hear the details of the installation process – since our presence was requested, I assume he wants to hear it from _you_.”

 

Khan, who was currently hip-deep in the access tunnel below the displaced floor panel, lifted blazing eyes from the schematic he had been reviewing on the PADD in his hand, visibly reigning in his temper. “As he did not specifically say as much, it would be best, I think,” he said, sharp, terse and entirely frustrated, “for you to make my excuses, Rebecca and proctor the meeting yourself – you are sufficiently versed in the subject matter to do the job passably well.”

 

Pursing her lips, Duval crossed her arms over her chest. “Careful…too much talk like that’s liable to go straight to my head.”

 

Eyes narrowing at her snark, Khan’s chin came up though he otherwise ignored her comment. “Might I also remind you that it was _you_ who pointed out that Marcus had, in all likelihood, scheduled the meeting for no other reason than to irritate me.”

 

“Yeah,” Duval said, rolling her eyes, “and might I then remind _you_ that _you_ were the one who said that you would, and I quote ‘relish the opportunity to turn his presumption back upon him’.”

 

With an amusingly prim sniff, Khan looked away. “Yes, well, at my most amenable, I might well have managed to muster the astounding generosity of forbearance required for such a task…but alas, I fear I am not at my most _amenable_ at present.”

 

“Really?” Duval arched a brow, shooting him a look that was eloquently pointed. “I hadn’t noticed.”

 

The smile he gave her then was clearly forced and entirely fake – as poor an attempt at manipulation as she’d ever seen from him. “There, you see? Would you truly have me face Marcus in such a temper? _Imagine_ what might occur.”

 

Oh, but he was pouring it on _thick_. A little _too_ thick, as far as she was concerned.

 

She returned his false grin with an equally insincere one of her own. “Aww, now…don’t sell yourself short – you’re the one who always goes on about how good you were at making allies out of enemies. I’m sure you can manage to be…well,” she bit her lip, made a moue of consideration, “ok, maybe not _pleasant_ , but at least something less than hostile. Even that much would do wonders for Marcus’ faith in me.”

 

The fake smile dropped from Khan’s face, his eyes darkening dangerously. “Ah yes, how _could_ I have forgotten – _you_ are determined to appease the Admiral and thus _I_ must behave myself accordingly.” He slapped the PADD down onto the floor at her feet before vaulting up out of the access tunnel. Determinedly _not_ looking at her, he moved to edge past her, his anger and frustration blindingly evident.

 

Duval, frowning now, side-stepped, putting herself directly into his path, hands out in front of her, hovering just above his chest. “Come on now…that wasn’t only _my_ idea and you know it.”

 

“Yet _I_ am the one suffering the most imposition _because_ of it.”

 

“You think I don’t feel the burden of this just as much as you do?”

 

Khan’s head snapped down, his eyes boring hot and fierce into hers. “When _precisely_ has licking the Admiral’s boots been a burden for _you_?”

 

The room around them remained busy and noisy as ever, but around them – between them – everything went still. Silent.

 

Duval’s arms dropped, betrayal burning hot beneath her skin as she stared up at Khan, pained disbelief pulling at her brows and aching hurt tugging at the corners of her lips. “Well,” she said, despising the tremble in her voice, “that’s a far cry from _do what you must_ , isn’t it?”

 

The fire in his eyes now dimmed to ash, Khan flinched so slightly that it was almost unnoticeable. “I should not have…” he paused, his right hand reaching for her left, his fingers brushing softly against hers.

 

Balling her hands into fists, rejecting his attempt at contact though she could see the very real regret on his face, Duval drew herself as far away from him as she could without actually moving. “But you _did_. Just like you always have.” She sniffed, looked away from him. “Just like you always will.”

 

From the corner of her eye – she couldn’t seem to _stop_ watching him, no matter how much she wanted to – she watched as Khan’s proud shoulders slumped, as that august head dropped forward and those soul-searing eyes clamped shut. A moment later, he sighed and even the sound of it was miserable. “Forgive me,” he said, quiet and almost painfully contrite. “Rebecca…forgive me. I allowed my frustration to rule me at your expense. I know…I am well aware of how little you like this.”

 

“ _Are_ you?”

 

More silence. Then, to her surprise, Khan stepped toward her once more, his head bent toward hers though he didn’t actually touch her.

 

“Are _you_?”

 

He threw the words back at her in a rush, his voice hushed but oddly impassioned. Confused and annoyed and still so damn _hurt_ , Duval turned to shoot him a side-eyed glare. “The hell kinda question is that?”

 

“ _Do_ you see what this is doing to you, Rebecca? Do you recognize how greatly this… _purgatory_ is weighing on you?”

 

_And here I’d thought my insides couldn’t get any more twisted up than they already were…_

She turned her face away again. “You know, we really don’t have time for this kind of…”

 

“Because it is,” he spat, cutting her off abruptly. “It _is_ weighing on you. It always has – I’ve watched you struggle against Marcus’ bridle almost constantly since the very first day I met you. But now…this week past…” his voice trailed off, his head dropped further toward her, his breath hot against her ear. “He is _strangling_ you, Rebecca.”

 

Duval stared blankly across the large room, hearing his words; feeling the simple, _impossible_ truth of them…but running yet again into the wall of her own impotence.

 

He was right – she _knew_ he was right – but what was she supposed to do about it?

 

_You have a choice to make._

 

She frowned, biting back hard on the frustration that those words – those _stupid fucking words_ that just wouldn’t go away – sent roiling through her gut. She _hated_ those words now. _Hated_ them. What did they even mean? _You have a choice to make._ What choice? What choice did she honestly have?

 

Marcus or Khan?

 

_How_ was that a choice? What was she even supposed to be choosing _between_?

 

Why the _fuck_ had she ever let herself get sucked so far down this ridiculous, hopeless, bottomless rabbit hole?

 

Duval sucked in a shaking, stuttering breath, her heart racing and the world around her going into a dull, soft focus. Balling her trembling hands into fists once more, she turned away from Khan and snatched up the bag that held her own PADD as well as the rest of the necessities that he had required for their work that day. “You…you should work,” she gasped out, dodging his hands and resolutely not looking at him – Oh _God_ , she couldn’t look at him; she just _couldn’t_. “I’ll…I’ll give the meeting. I can give the meeting.”

 

“Rebecca…Rebecca… _stop_ …”

 

He was talking. He was talking to her. But she couldn’t _look_ at him. Didn’t he know that she couldn’t look at him right now?

 

“I can’t,” she said, walking away now. _Away. Keep walking. Don’t stop…_

His hand was on her wrist, his fingers gentle but strong and he was pulling at her…bringing her back when she was supposed to be _walking away…_

“ _LET ME GO!”_

The words tore from her throat, loud and desperate and just a little bit beseeching and as soon as the last syllable left her lips, the pressure on her wrist disappeared. Rushing forward without even glancing behind, she almost ran for the main doors that would get her out of Engineering. Somewhere, down beneath the fog that had rolled across her brain, she realized that people were looking at her…staring… _gawking_ …

 

_You made a scene._

 

It was that voice again. That same, perfectly calm, perfectly possessed voice, talking at her like it hadn’t a care in the world. She hated that voice almost as much as she hated the words it always, always, _always_ said.  

 

_You were supposed to be making a choice and you made a scene instead. Well done._

She ignored it. She could do that. She was good at ignoring things she didn’t want to hear.

 

And she did. She ignored it.

 

Duval ignored it as she passed through the doors of Engineering and sped through the Vengeance’s half-completed corridors. She ignored it as she stumbled through the door of the conference room where the meeting was to be held. She was still ignoring it when she started talking, spitting out facts about the warp core installation that she’d gleaned from paying attention during the other thousand meetings like this one she had been forced to sit through.

 

It wasn’t until someone was standing in front of her, hands gripping tight to her shoulders – too tight, not like…not _right_ – that Duval even realized that she was crying. _Crying_. In the middle of a meeting. _Her_.

 

_What the fuck is wrong with me?_

“You’re fine, Rebecca. You’ll be fine. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

 

She’d said that out loud. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud. Not good, that; saying things without meaning to was bad for business. At least, bad for _her_ business. But at least she knew who had hold of her now; knew who the _wrong_ hands on her shoulders and the _wrong_ voice saying her name belonged to.

 

“Vazquez.”

 

“That’s right,” he said. “It’s me…it’s Rafael.”

 

“Jesus fucking Christ…Vazquez, shut up. Duval…”

 

Vazquez was gone then, shoved aside and now it was Marcus in front of her – Marcus she knew instantly; would always know instantly – and somehow, that was…better?

 

No. No…not _better_. Simpler.

 

“Medical, Duval. Now. I’m taking you myself, so start walking.”

 

“Aye, sir.”

 

No shake in her voice now, no trembling. Marcus gave the orders. She followed the orders. He said walk…so she walked.

 

Simple. 

 

_Wrong_. _Make the choice._

“You stop moving, Duval and I swear to God I’ll drag your ass if I have to. Move.”

 

Easy. 

 

_Wrong. Make the choice, Rebecca._

“Carlson? Get out here now.”

 

She _fit_ this life. She was only fit _for_ this life.

 

_Wrong on both counts. Make the choice._

“What the hell’s wrong with her?”

 

Alexander Marcus _made_ her.

 

**_You_ ** _made you. Make…the…choice…_

“I can’t!” She heard her own voice, yelling, wailing the words. “I can’t…I can’t… _I can’t…_ ”

 

Then there was a sharp pain in her neck and she couldn’t hear or see anything at all.

 

* * *

 

 

The door of their quarters slid open in front of her, the darkness within as familiar to her as anything in her life had ever been and Duval let her eyes slide closed for a moment, inhaling the comforting scent of _home_. A wave of vertigo hit her, though she fought hard against it, one hand lifting to catch at the door frame, fingers going white at the knuckle from the sheer force of her grip.

 

“You still aren’t feeling well – are you sure you don’t want to come back with me to medical? I could…”

 

“No, thank you.” Duval bit the words out, as polite as she could manage under the circumstances. Sucking in and letting out one more deep breath, she forced her eyes open and glanced over her shoulder toward where Dr. Carlson was standing behind her. The older woman had insisted on escorting her from medical, despite Duval’s protests and was now watching her closely, concern casting a shadow across her normally stoic brow. “I’d really rather be on my own right now.”

 

The concern sharpened, gained an edge of wariness. “Why?”

 

Duval didn’t much like it. At all.

 

“Why the hell do you think? It’s been a miserable fucking day, Doc, and as much as I _appreciate_ you worrying about me, all I want to do is bury myself in my bed and sleep for a week. I figured you’d approve since you were the one yelling my ear off about stress and sleep deprivation not two hours ago.”

 

Carlson eyeballed her for another long moment, then let out an inelegant snort, all that concern and wariness melting away beneath a look of wry amusement. “You appreciate my worrying about as much as I appreciate your _honesty_ , Duval.” With that, she shoved her way past Duval and into the common area, lights automatically flickering to life with her movements. She marched herself straight over to the synthesizer. “Since you wouldn’t eat in medical, you’ll eat now. What do you want?”

 

Lips pursed in annoyance, Duval stepped the rest of the way out of the corridor, the door hissing shut behind her. She stopped at their little table, hands finding the back of the nearest chair and holding it tight, unwilling to show the other woman just how shaky she still felt – she’d spent over an hour asleep on one of those pallets in medical and that had been long enough. “I’m not hungry.”

 

Turning, Carlson pinned her with a look that was part annoyance, part determination. “I don’t believe that’s what I asked. Stop being a pain in my ass and just pick something, Duval.”

 

“I’m not trying to be a pain in the ass,” Duval snapped. “I’m just not hungry.”

 

The doctor arched a brow, crossed her arms over her chest. “Duval, you just spent the better part of the morning in my sickbay recovering from a panic attack triggered by stress, sleep deprivation and dehydration. Now, I didn’t have to release you as quickly as I did, but I know you and I know you’ll rest much better _here_ than _there_. However…” she accentuated the word, holding her hand up to forestall the words she had clearly seen hovering at the edge of Duval’s lips, “…if you don’t want me to drag your ass back to medical again – which I think we both know I could do right now, despite the show you’re trying to put on – you’ll do as I say and eat something.”

 

She was beaten and she knew it.

 

That didn’t mean she had to like it.

 

Lips pressed into a thin line, Duval looked away. “Turkey sandwich,” she said, pulling the chair out and edging around it to drop in a heap onto the seat. “Mustard and onions. On white.”

 

Triumphant and completely open about showing it, Carlson turned back to the synthesizer and input the order, paused. “A multi-grain bread would be better for you.”

 

Duval, who had the heels of her hands pressed against her eyes, elbows propped on the table, didn’t even bother to look up. “Do you want me to eat it or not?”

 

“Fine.”

 

Silence then, save for the gentle hum of the synthesizer working. A few moments later, a plate banged onto the table beside Duval, followed almost immediately by a tall glass of water. Staring down at the food, she had to swallow hard against the way her stomach lurched at the sight.

 

“Take a few big gulps of the water,” Carlson advised, pulling the opposite chair out and settling herself into it. “It’ll help settle the nausea.”

 

Obeying without hesitation, Duval snatched up the glass and tipped it back against her lips, sucking down a healthy amount of the ice-cold liquid. She stopped when Carlson’s hand caught at the glass, tugging it away from her mouth.

 

“I said a few gulps, not the whole damn thing. Too much too fast and you _will_ throw up.”

 

Eyes closed once more as she tried not to do just that, Duval grinned tightly. “Haven’t you heard? I’m not exactly stellar at following orders these days.”

 

There was a long, heavy silence at that. A pregnant silence. Duval frowned, opening her eyes to find Carlson staring at her with an expression on her face like nothing Duval had ever seen from her before. Worried, still…but now reluctant, pained and…regretful? The combination was disturbing, to say the least, and Duval could feel herself tense up beneath the weight of it.

 

“What?” She yanked her elbows backwards off the table, palms slapping flat onto the surface on either side of her plate. “What’s wrong?”

 

Carlson dropped her gaze to the table top, her own hands now fiddling with the bag she’d carried with her from medical, tugging at the closure fretfully. “You’ll have the afternoon to yourself,” she said quietly, voice strained. “The Admiral is keeping Commander Harrison occupied to give you some…privacy.”

 

_LET ME GO!_

The memory came back in a rush, hitting Duval hard, right in the middle of her chest and she swallowed, gritting her teeth. He wouldn’t have appreciated that, her shrieking at him like a harpy in front of just about the entire Engineering roster. To say that she wasn’t looking forward to facing him again after…

 

Well, suffice to say, the only person she was _less_ eager to see at present was Marcus.

 

And wasn’t _that_ just a whole other can of worms.

 

_No_ , she told herself firmly. _Don’t think of Marcus. Don’t think of either of them. Not yet. Carlson’s right. Eat…sleep…deal with them later when you don’t feel like a strong breeze might blow you down._

“Probably for the best,” she responded as airily as she could. “I doubt he’s particularly pleased with me at the moment.”

 

Carlson frowned, glanced up, then away again, her eyes straying to the room around them, taking in details. “He tried to see you.”

 

Duval, who had picked up the sandwich and was just about to take her first bite, looked up in surprise. “What?”

 

“Harrison. He came to medical. Wanted to see you – to make sure you were all right.”

 

Frozen with the sandwich just below her mouth, Duval felt a pang of… _something_. “He…he did?”

 

Now Carlson’s eyes swung back to hers, taking stock once again, reading her like very few people of her acquaintance had ever had the ability to do. Whatever she saw only seemed to upset her more, the frown between her eyes growing more pronounced. “He did. Marcus stopped him, had him escorted out. He wasn’t happy.”

 

“I can imagine,” Duval said, dropping the sandwich back to the plate, forgotten.

 

Carlson leaned forward suddenly, catching Duval’s hands in hers with an intensity that was startling. “I’m not stupid,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “I know there’s more going on here than I’m being told. I know there’s more to _Harrison_ than any of us are being told…and I know you’re right smack in the middle of whatever mess Marcus has made _this_ time. Just…just tell me _one_ thing, Rebecca…Harrison…does he…is he… _good_ to you?”

 

Wide-eyed now, Duval pulled back though she left her hands in Carlson’s grasp. “What?”

 

Grip tightening, Carlson leaned even further across the table, eyes blazing. “Marcus has always talked too loud around me, so I know a little bit of what’s been going on. I know that Harrison is the unstoppable force and that Marcus is the immovable object and that you’re stuck between the two. I just didn’t realize how stuck you actually were until this morning. I’ve never seen you like that before…”

 

“I’ve never _been_ like that before,” Duval hissed, now tugging her hands away. “And I’m fine now. It’s all fine. I don’t need…”

 

“Yes, you do,” Carlson cut in, adamant. “You _do_ need, Rebecca. You _need_ more than you know…and I might be able to help with that. But first, what _I_ need to know is…”

 

“ _Yes_ ,” Duval whispered, harsh and sharp, her hands balled into fists where they sat in her lap. She met Carlson’s eyes squarely, feeling the burn of tears in hers. “Yes, he’s good to me. He’s…no one’s ever…” she stopped, choking on the words. “That’s what makes this…all of this…so… _hard_.”

 

Carlson stared at her for a long moment, then blew out a breath and looked down, hands once more on the bag looped across her body. “I think that answers all of my questions,” she said, suddenly calm. “Now…the _Admiral_ instructed me to give these to you once you were, in his words, rational enough to appreciate them fully. Told me to tell you that it’s for… _perspective._ ” She lifted the bag from around her and laid it on the table. She looked up at Duval, that regretful look back on her face, though paired now with a faint smirk. “I know what he’s hoping you do with this,” she said, patting the bag, “but I have to admit, I’m kinda hoping you go a different way with it all.”

 

She scooted the bag across the table, but kept her palm flat on top of it. “I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.”

 

Duval, eyes on the bag and a strange mix of excitement and apprehension in her veins, looked up to see Carlson moving away from the table and back toward the main door. “You’ll just have to wait and see _what_?”

 

There was so much going on here…so much more than what appeared on the surface. Duval was looking at a woman that she had known her entire professional career, but she was suddenly wondering if she’d ever known her at all. Something about the way she had been looking at her…the tone of her voice…

 

The doctor _knew_ something. Something about _her_.

 

Carlson, turning back just as she reached the door, offered a small grin, too sad to genuinely be called a smile, but fierce too and strangely…proud. “Whether you’re as much your father’s daughter as I’ve always thought you were.”

 

And then she was gone, the door shutting behind her and leaving Duval staring, shocked and unseeing, at the blank surface, the Doctor’s parting words echoing over and over in her ears.

 

_Whether you’re as much your father’s daughter…_

_...your father’s daughter…_

With a sharp gasp, she whipped back around in her seat, grabbing at the simple black bag sitting so innocuously on the table and pulling it toward her, the action knocking the plate, sandwich and all, and the half-full water glass from the table. Duval didn’t even flinch when they shattered on the floor at her feet, didn’t even glance away from the bag in her hands as her suddenly clumsy fingers slipped and tripped over the closure. Finally working it free, she held it open and looked inside, her heart jumping into her throat at the sight of one of Marcus’ hard copy folders, thick with papers, settled inside.

 

Reaching in, grasping the file in a trembling hand, Duval drew it out, laying it flat on the table in front of her and shoving the bag away. Breath coming hard and fast, she stared straight ahead, terrified to look down…terrified to see what was in that file.

 

She had learned, once she’d reached the point where she’d gained the Admiral’s notice, that there were certain things that he preferred to keep _out_ of the electronic data pool. The most sensitive and highly classified information he possessed, he kept entirely to himself, preferring not to risk exposure should the wrong person somehow gain access to Section files.

 

Duval didn’t have to look at this particular file to know that it had something to do with _her._ What would have been the point in giving it to her otherwise? Based on what Carlson said…

 

She swallowed. Blinked.

 

_It’s not…it can’t…there’s no way this has anything to do with…_

 

She looked down…and forgot how to breathe.

 

It was right there on the cover, typed out in black, block letters: **Duval, J. R.** Jean Rene Duval.

 

Her father.

 

_Her father_.

 

But…why? Why was there a file with her father’s name on it? Why the hell did _Marcus_ have a file with her father’s name on it?

 

The urge to panic welled up from inside of her, but she brushed it aside impatiently. Frankly, she was tired of going to pieces – she’d done it more than enough for one day. And this…she didn’t know what was inside the folder, but she knew it wasn’t going to be pretty.

 

And so far today, she had been far from at her _best_.

 

Taking a deep breath, she reached out and flipped the folder open…and promptly went completely numb. Right there, on the very first page…

 

**Lieutenant Jean R. Duval**

**Active Agent, 2221.289 – 2232.147**

Active Agent. Her father was an Agent. Her father was a Section man.

 

How…how had she not known that? Why hadn’t anyone ever told her? Why hadn’t _Marcus_ told her?

 

She stared down at that page, at those two simple lines of text and she knew, without question, that this was far from _it_. That there was something else. Something… _more._ Marcus had kept this from her for a reason, just as he was showing it to her now for a reason.

 

_For perspective_ , he’d told Carlson to tell her.

 

Duval chewed her lip, brain working furiously as she stared down at those first little bits of information, the first stardate catching her eye as she reached to flip to the next page. 2221…the year he had graduated from the Academy; he had been recruited straight off, just like she had been. He had been younger than her, of course.

 

Hell, he had been younger than her in everything that he had done. He had even died…

 

She stopped mid-thought, realization slamming into her _hard_ and she tore the page back over, staring down at his apparent end date. 2232, it said, but that just wasn’t _possible._

 

Her parents had died in 2231 – her mother on 2231.107, her father on 2231.109. There was no question about that. She _knew_ those dates. They were burned into her brain; had been since she was a very little girl. But this…this scrap of paper in front of her was saying something very… _very_ different…

 

_2232_.

 

The date danced in front of her eyes, taunting her. If that was correct, that meant that her father had been alive for over a year after leaving her. _A year_.

 

It also meant that he hadn’t...that he didn’t…

 

She closed her eyes, squeezing them shut, hands tightly fisted where they rested on the table. It would be so easy to let herself get overwhelmed; to let herself sink back into the panicked miasma of earlier. But she wouldn’t let _herself_ do it. She owed it to herself to stay focused…and if the rest of the file contained anything like what that first page had, then it might well turn out that she owed it to her _parents_ as well.

 

_One page at a time_ , she told herself as she opened her eyes and turned the page again. _You can process the details later. Right now, just read one page at a time._

* * *

 

 

A few hours later – she wasn’t really sure how many – the hiss of the door opening sounded like a thunderclap through the otherwise silent room. Duval, curled up in her chair with her knees to her chest, her arms wrapped around her shins and her head tipped against the back of the chair, didn’t bother to open her eyes. She didn’t need to – she knew it was him.

 

Saying nothing, she listened to the sound of him moving across the room toward her. He paused only a few feet away – though whether that was because of _her_ or because of the papers that were currently scattered across the coffee table, she didn’t know. It wasn’t a long pause though; a few moments later he was moving again, the creak of the couch signaling that he had taken his habitual seat across from her, as had become their routine.

 

Despite everything – or maybe _because_ of it – she grinned faintly at that thought. They had _habits_. They had a _routine_. And she loved it.

 

She could admit that now.

 

She could admit a lot of things now.

 

But first…

 

“I’m sorry.” The words were heartfelt, her voice strong. Not even a hint of a shake; so much different than their conversation earlier in the day. “This morning…I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that in front of people. Granted, I wasn’t quite at my best, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was uncalled for.”

 

Silence.

 

“You’ve no need to apologize,” he said, the words stiff and tight. “I…hope you did not imagine that I would be angry.”

 

Eyes popping open, head coming up, Duval met his eyes across the width of the room. As ever, the mere sight of him was enough to send her heart into a tailspin, but the shadowy almost haunted look in his eyes was more than a little sobering. “Well…I certainly didn’t imagine you appreciated it – any of it. I doubt seeing me lose control of myself like that was terribly charming.”

 

He stared at her, his expression bleak, tense. “I watched you _break_ before my eyes and you believe I was concerned with how _charming_ it was?” His jaw clenched and he looked away. “You have very little faith in me, Rebecca.”

 

It wasn’t spoken like an accusation, but it felt like one and Duval couldn’t help but flinch. Before, she likely would have retreated behind her natural defenses, the walls that she had spent so much of her life constructing. But now…

 

She glanced down toward the papers on the coffee table and felt something _shift_ inside of her. Something essential. Something fundamental. Her life wasn’t what she had always thought that it was. Maybe…maybe _she_ didn’t have to be either.

 

Taking a deep breath and feeling more grounded than she had in a _very_ long time, Duval shifted her gaze back up to Khan, drinking him in. “You’re wrong,” she said finally, so certain now where she had been nothing but confused only hours before.

 

As expected, _that_ had gotten his attention and his head jerked toward her, a faint flicker of temper sparking to life in his eyes. “I beg your pardon?”

 

“You’re wrong,” she repeated, sitting up straighter in the chair, sliding her hands up to rest on top of her bent knees. “This morning…that just now…it’s about _me_. My issues. My insecurities and uncertainties. It’s not…none of it’s about _you_. I have…” she stopped and sucked in a breath, tears welling up in her eyes from the sheer enormity of what she was about to admit. “I have… _every_ faith in you, Khan.”

 

And she did. She knew that now. She knew a lot of things now.

 

Khan, however, didn’t appear to share her newfound conviction. His face had gone completely and unrelentingly blank – even his eyes were devoid of every speck of his usual fire – and he had gone utterly, _utterly_ still. For several loudly thudding heartbeats, Duval just watched him as he watched her, hoping that he would say something, her courage dwindling with every moment that he remained silent.

 

Finally, she gave up, looked down to where her palms were now rubbing circles against her kneecaps. She had been in such a good place when he walked in – a _surprisingly_ good place, all things considered. She had been sitting there, feeling more comfortable in her own skin than she had in nearly her entire _life_ , thinking that for once – _for once_ – she knew who she really was and what she really wanted.

 

But now…now, suddenly, crying seemed like a really good idea.

 

“Something is different.”

 

The words were a thick, graveled sound, his voice ragged, but Duval refused to look up at him, knowing that she absolutely _would_ start crying if she did. “Everything is different,” she corrected, seeing no point in denying it when telling him about it was what she wanted more than anything. “I thought for the better, but…”

 

“It has been less than six hours since I saw you last, Rebecca, and yet the woman I see sitting before me is lightyears removed from the woman I watched come apart at the seams this morning. How _can_ so much have changed in so little time?”  

 

He sounded angry. No…not angry. He sounded _furious_. Shoulders coming up as she shrank further into the chair, Duval’s eyes _did_ fill with tears now. “Marcus dragged me to medical,” she said, that damned tremble back in her voice. “He didn’t like what he saw either, so he decided I needed a little _perspective_.” She kicked one bare foot out – her boots long abandoned on the floor beside her chair – and nudged at the coffee table. “Those papers contained a whole hell of a lot of it.”

 

“Tell me.”

 

He bit the words out, an uncompromising order that set her every nerve on edge. Head whipping up, she glared at him, not even noticing the tears that slid down her cheeks. “My father didn’t kill himself,” she snapped out, starting with the parts that had meant the absolute _most_ to her. “And my mother didn’t die in an accident.”

 

“What?”

 

She unfolded herself from the chair completely, stood up and scooped all the papers back into the folder before stalking over to him and dumping the lot in his lap. “I wanted to tell you all about it,” she said tiredly, “but now I’d rather you just read it yourself. I’m gonna go take a shower and hope that you’ve decided _not_ to be a prick by the time I get out.”

 

Duval turned away from him but was stopped short by his hand on her arm, just like it had been that morning, drawing her back toward him. “Rebecca…”

 

Closing her eyes for a moment, she was surprised with how easy it was to find that calm place inside of her again. Turning back around, she walked herself directly into his personal space, forcing him to lean back and look up at her. Not giving him a chance to speak, she bent down and pressed her lips to his, wrapping the hand that he wasn’t holding around the back of his neck, pulling him in closer. It was not a passionate kiss, but it was no less satisfying for it – Duval hummed happily when she felt the tension in him snap, the pinch of his lips easing as they began to move against hers. He opened his mouth to deepen the kiss, but Duval held back, tracing her tongue over the fullness of his lower lip, allowing one sweep of her tongue against his before she pulled back. His eyes were closed and she took advantage, leaning in to press a soft kiss high on his right cheekbone, just below the corner of his eye, her lips lingering.

 

“I’m not angry,” she murmured against his skin, scratching at the back of his neck to punctuate the words. “I hope you won’t be either.”

 

She drew back just enough to meet his eyes, open now and focused on hers with familiar – and welcome, wanted, _longed for_ – intensity. Bringing her hand around from his nape, she laid it against his cheek, smiling softly. “And I meant what I said.” She dropped her forehead forward to rest against his. “Every faith.”

 

Khan said nothing, but he let go of her arm, lifting his hand to the back of her head, fingers carding through her hair until his palm lay against the curve of her skull, pressing into her as much as she was him. They stayed like that, breathing together, savoring the closeness for several very long moments.

 

Finally – reluctantly – Duval pulled away. Khan’s hands fell away from her instantly, though his eyes, twin points of gelid flame, made no move to release her. She’d been on the receiving end of that look so many times over the past months, but this time – for the first time – it didn’t even occur to her to look away. She met that look head on, lumen for lumen and was delighted at the tiny, almost unnoticeable catch in his breath. Dropping her hand down from his cheek, she pressed it against the folder still sitting in his lap. “Please,” she said quietly, not at all ashamed at the sincerity of the plea, “please read it. I need…I need someone else to know.” She smiled at him, a small uptick at the corner of her mouth. “I need _you_ to know.”

 

He swallowed, looked down, shifting the folder in his grasp, then looked back up at her. “Go. Shower,” he said, nodding toward the door behind them. “I will read.”

 

“Thank you,” she breathed, then backed away from him one, two steps, not wanting to look away and then finally making herself turn, the fear of tripping over something and ruining the moment outstripping her desire not to break such delicious eye contact. She could feel his eyes on her back, but she didn’t look at him again, letting the door of the bathroom shut behind her without giving in to the urge.

 

She stripped quickly, ignoring the mirror, suddenly almost desperate to retreat under the almost hypnotic beat of the spray. Cranking up both the temperature and the intensity of the spray, she threw herself beneath it, hissing slightly at the needle-like sharpness of the heat.

 

In her mind, she pictured him sitting out there, devouring the information that had literally changed _everything_ for her. No doubt he was already through all the first pages, detailing her father’s early career, his almost meteoric rise through the ranks of the earliest incarnation of Section 31. Was he reading about Jean Duval’s very first reprimand, when his superiors had discovered that not only had he married without informing them, but fathered a child as well?

 

Or was he past that even? Had he reached the worst part yet? The part where her father’s cover had been blown while infiltrating a particularly nasty organized crime ring operating out of Lunar One Colony. Or maybe the part where the ringleader’s son had been killed during the extraction and the ringleader had sent his goons to return the favor, only when they ran the little car off the road that Sunday morning, no child had been inside and they’d had to settle for his wife instead.

 

Duval shivered, even beneath all that heat, and her skin went stiff with goosebumps. Behind her eyes, she pictured her mother, the first time since reading the information that she had actually allowed herself to do so. The image was vivid, despite the years that had passed since she’d seen her mother in anything but a picture – she didn’t even have any vids of her; she knew her grandparents had, but they’d never shared them with her. She could see her now, dancing in the kitchen as she cooked dinner, grabbing up her baby daughter in her arms and twirling her around, both of them giggling; setting little Rebecca back on her feet before dropping to her knees and sweeping her into a hug, dropping a kiss on the tip of her tiny nose. Aurelie Duval, with her cinnamon curls and flashing blue eyes had been the brightest, boldest star in her young daughter’s sky…

 

_And they killed her. Slit her throat and threw her body in a ditch._

She could picture that too now – Marcus had been kind enough to include crime scene images.

 

A sob burst from her throat, loud and guttural. Duval tried to reign it in, to hold it back. She turned her face up into the spray, letting it wash away her tears. No use dwelling, chances were he was well past all that now anyway.

 

He was probably reading about how her father had given her up; probably even now was skimming over the included psych eval that detailed why he had granted guardianship to her grandparents. How he done it for her, to protect her. How Section brass had promised she would be secured, so long as he remained an Agent in good standing. How he had wanted nothing but the best for her…so that she could be safe. So that she could grow up happy. And loved.

 

He had been so… _so…_ wrong, but…he had meant well. He had…he had _tried_ to do right by her. He hadn’t just…just _left_ her. It had said it, right there in black and white – he had hoped to see her again one day, once it was safe.

 

But _he_ hadn’t been safe. _He_ hadn’t been happy. The incident report on his death, dated less than a year later, had been explicit about one thing – Jean Duval had never been the same after the loss of his wife. He had grown careless…wreckless…and it had cost him his life. Fueled by his grief, he had died on some distant planet.

 

Alone.

 

Another sob ripped from her throat, nearly choking her. Duval reached out blindly, catching herself on the cool tile and no longer even attempting to keep the tears at bay. She deserved to cry. Over this? She _needed_ to cry.

 

This…it all explained so _much_.

 

It explained why her grandfather had hated her and why her grandmother had tried but had barely been able to look at her. It didn’t excuse what they’d done and it didn’t make her hate either of them any less…but at least she _understood_ them better now.

 

She understood…

 

The air shifted, a waft of cold air hitting her back and making her gasp. A moment later, Khan’s bare arm snaked around her waist, the palm of his hand fitting around the swell of her hip and pulling her back toward him until her back rested against his front. Duval, sighing, melted back into him, wrapping her own arm atop his, fingers caressing his forearm. She closed her eyes and let her head rest against him.

 

_“It should have been you_ ,” she said, knowing he would hear her crystal clear despite the noise of the shower – superhuman hearing did have its advantages, after all. “That’s what he always used to say to me.”

 

Khan tensed, his arm tightening around her waist as he lowered his head, lips brushing her ear. “Your grandfather?”

 

She nodded, another sob trembling at the corners of her mouth. “Now I know,” she choked, her voice cracking. “It should have been me.”

 

And then she was crying in earnest; hard, wracking sobs shaking her entire body. She cried for her mother – her bold, beautiful mother who had lit her world. She cried for her father – brave and brash and so much like her that it made her _ache_.

 

But most of all…most of all she cried for herself. For the little girl who had been so, _so_ loved. For the teenager who had only ever wanted to _be_ loved. For the young Agent who had decided she didn’t need love.

 

Khan wrapped his other arm around her, cocooning her in his strength; protecting her, even from herself. He was whispering in her ear, comforting words, sweet words, words that only made her cry harder.

 

Because she cried for herself, right now, too. For the woman who was finally learning what it meant _to_ love...

 

Marcus had given her that folder, fully intending for it to scare her straight. He had assumed, in his arrogance, that he knew her better than she knew herself – that she would take one look at what emotions had cost her father and turn her back on her own. But Carlson…Carlson had been right.

 

Her parent’s story was a tragedy, no doubt. But that was their story…not hers. She wasn’t about to condemn herself to misery because of mistakes and decisions that had been made over twenty years prior. No, she looked at that file and all she could see was the fact that Marcus had _kept_ it from her. That he had known – that he had known her _father_ – and had never so much as hinted that he did.

 

She had trusted him. She had damn near _revered_ him…and he had betrayed her. Betrayed her regard and her trust.

 

Khan brushed a kiss on her ear, then pressed his lips to the skin of her neck, just behind her ear and suddenly…Duval knew.

 

She _knew_ …

 

_Now._ The same voice from this morning, calm and assured even now. _Make the decision, Duval._

But that was just the thing, really. There was no decision to be made. She knew what she was going to do; had known this morning too, she had just been too terrified to actually admit it.

 

She had made the choice.

 

Determinedly.

 

Decisively.

 

Definitively. 

 

She laid her other arm atop Khan’s, holding him as tightly as she could, at peace with her life for the first time _in_ her life.

 

She had made her choice.

  

_Khan_ was her choice.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing, save for what’s mine.
> 
> A/N: Another done…and far closer to my preferred bi-weekly time frame! Now, allow me to direct you all to this outstandingly lovely bit of art work – opheliah.deviantart.com/art/Lt-Rebecca-Duval-479259177 created by the fantastic thescienceofdepiction (look for her on tumblr…all of her work is fabulous!). It’s the very first piece of fanart I’ve seen based on something that I wrote and I love it to absolute pieces!
> 
> Speaking of tumblr, feel free to drop me a line on there if you’d like – I’m alethnya there as well. Honestly, I’m alethnya everywhere; have been for nearly a decade now, since my earliest World of Warcraft days. Anyway…now I’m babbling.
> 
> Firm M rating on this chapter, friends. Been awhile I know, but hopefully I’ve acquitted myself well. 
> 
> As always, thank you so very much to all who have read/reviewed/favorited/followed! And thank you to my beta & dear baby sister, Xaraphis for being my own private (and magnificently effective) drill sergeant.

_(five days later)_

On doctor’s orders, Duval had taken the last several days off. She had fought the idea at first – especially that first morning after Marcus’ great reveal – but Carlson had been adamant and had, frustratingly, found herself an utterly intractable ally in Khan. They had stood over her as she sat hunched in bed, knees clutched to her chest, red-rimmed eyes haunted and told her in no uncertain terms that she was going to rest whether she liked it or not.

 

So she had agreed. What else was she supposed to do? She refused to fight both of them.

 

Luckily, they had accepted her quick agreement without comment – though she’d seen the narrow-eyed look Khan shot at her over Carlson’s head, though she had pretended otherwise. He had suspected that her agreement had been a bit _too_ quick…and ultimately, he had been absolutely right too.

 

Duval comforted herself that she had, at least, spent the first two days of her voluntarily involuntary confinement doing exactly what they had wanted her to do – resting, coping…processing.

 

Carlson hadn’t mentioned anything directly when she had made her unannounced visit the morning after – which Duval thoroughly appreciated – but she had clearly been concerned. The older woman, who had spent the majority of her house-call quite literally wringing her hands, had dropped not-particularly-subtle hints nearly every other sentence, suggesting that the time off would be good for her… _in more ways than one._ Duval had found the implication that she _needed_ time ridiculous, but had nodded along anyway, just to get rid of the irritating, if well-meaning, physician.

Then, of all things irritating, it had turned out that she was… _right_.

 

Duval had, in the end, wound up spending most of the first two days coming to terms with what she had learned about her parents. It was, at once, both easier than it should have been and harder than she had expected. Pragmatic as she was, she had little difficulty over-writing the past she had known with the reality that had been kept from her. In the end, after all, it was nothing but data – it certainly explained a few things, put others into a fuller perspective. Ultimately though, all those new truths…they changed nothing.

 

It was good to know the truth, of course. Good to know that she _hadn’t,_ in fact, been abandoned. That her father _had_ wanted her…had hoped to one day come back for her. And _that_ was where the difficult part had reared its head, opened its jaws and sunk its teeth into her heart.

 

Knowing the contents of that folder didn’t make her parents any less dead or the memories of her childhood any less miserable. But what it _did_ do was make her think about things she would have been happier to have never even considered. Things like…what had her mother gone through in those last, surely desperate minutes of her life? What had she thought of? Had she known why it was happening? And her father…what must he have felt when he found out? How had he coped with it all, with the guilt that must surely have eaten at him like a cancer?

 

Those thoughts – those questions – had certainly eaten at _her_ and she had shut herself in her room, silently coming to terms with all of it. Khan, wonder that he was, made no comment and expressed absolutely no condemnation of her behavior, dismissing her apologies late that second night and merely pointing out that there was no right or wrong way to mourn.

 

Then, he had kissed her lightly and bid her goodnight, retiring to his own room. By the time Duval had crawled into his bed with him a few hours later, curling herself into his embrace and letting him kiss away the last of her tears, she had come to a very important decision.

 

She would have the rest of her life to mourn her parents. But there were things – other, more pressing things – that needed her attention in the here and now, and she had spent a long, sleepless night contemplating them.

 

Well, a sleepless night for _her_ at least – Khan had, conveniently, slept the night through, one arm draped around her waist and his forehead pressed between her shoulders. Balm as his presence had become to her, she had needed his silence equally as much throughout those hours of darkness. It had given her time to think – time to plan.

 

More specifically, time to think about what exactlyit meant when she said that she _chose_ Khan…and then, later, time to plan exactly how she was going to go about doing just that. The next morning, after Khan had left for another day spent overseeing the Vengeance warp core installation, Duval had set to work.

 

And now, after several days’ worth of planning and brainstorming and quiet, anonymous enquiry, she was already well on her way to setting the first cog in motion…

 

“Seriously? You can’t give me more than that to work off of?”

 

Duval, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the coffee table, frowned in concentration as she tapped away on the PADD perched in front of her. “Wouldn’t hurt to keep your eye out for any mention of the number 72…possibly 73. But other than that, no. At least, not at the moment. I’m hoping that’ll change very soon, but at this point, I’m a bit limited on info myself.”

 

On the other end of the connection, she could hear Thomas Harewood – mid-level Section 31 weapons specialist stationed to the Kelvin facility – gritting his teeth in annoyance. “So why not just wait until you can actually give me something I can actually _use_?”

 

She shot a quick glare at the communicator lying open beside her hand. It was a point of no little trepidation for her, doing this without discussing it with Khan…but she knew him – he would flat out refuse to let her help if she _did_ discuss it with him first. The only way she was going to make this happen was to start the process without him. If it was already done, he would have little choice but to accept it and, eventually – hopefully – embrace it. Of course, Harewood needed to know exactly _none_ of that. “Reasons,” she snapped. “None of which are any of your business.”

 

There was a sharp huff on the other end, a moment of silence. “Right. _Fine_. So I’m to look into any Section funded facilities housing medical staff…and the numbers 72 and 73. Can you at least give me a time frame or am I going to be sending you thirty years’ worth of data?”

 

 _Smart ass_.

 

“Start in November of last year but focus heavily on December and January. I’m talking fine-tooth-comb focus, Harewood. If there’s anything to be found, it’ll be subtle – the brass would have been very careful to keep any mentions of this project as vague as possible.”

 

A snort now and Duval could picture the eye-roll that would certainly have accompanied it. “Official section records kept deliberately vague…imagine that.”

 

Duval quirked a brow, grinned. “Real shocker, I know.”

 

“And how do I get the information to you, if I do happen to find anything?”

 

Leaning back against the couch behind her, Duval ran her teeth over her lower lip thoughtfully. “You’re still assigned to ship-based weapons development, right?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

She nodded. “Perfect. Put together a comprehensive report on currently in use torpedo technology. It’s pertinent to a project in development out here so no one will question it. Embed anything you dig up within that report and I’ll find it.”

 

“Any particular method you’d prefer I use for the encoding?”

 

Duval’s grin widened now, hearing the edge to Harewood’s voice. “Just use the same system here that you do in your _extracurricular correspondence._ I figured that one out easily enough. Though I was impressed with just how many top secret development projects you managed to leak in a single document.”

 

“Where the hell could you possibly have…”

 

“Happened to be running an info-gathering op on a high up in the Wuqi Company who was running a weapons smuggling ring on the side. Imagine my surprise when I start digging through his desk and find official Section 31 documents.”

 

Silence. 

 

“So _that’s_ how you knew.”

 

“Knew what?” Duval leaned forward again, folding her arms on the tabletop and directing the same knowing smirk at the communicator that she would have the man on the other end. “How to get in touch with you on your completely blacked out ghost comm? Or are you referring to your little foray into industrial espionage? Either way, the answer’s the same – partly.”

 

Again, that telling silence. She could almost _feel_ Harewood’s discomfort…his _fear_.

 

 _Good_ , she thought uncharitably, _be afraid. You should be. If it weren’t for me having friends in very low places, you’d have been dead months ago._

 

“Partly?”

 

“I don’t plan on elaborating.”

 

“Right.” A beat. “We’ll be square after this, yeah? You said I’d owe you a favor…this is it, right? You’ll not contact me again.”

 

“I said you’d _owe_ me, Harewood,” Duval picked up the communicator, holding it cradled in one palm, fingers already poised to snap it shut. “I never specified how much and I certainly never said it would be just one favor.”

 

“Fucking hell, Duval,” the other man’s voice was a hiss now, anger and frustration clear despite the distance between them. “You’re asking me to commit treason…”

 

“You’ve _already_ committed treason,” Duval cut across him, already tired of the conversation. “And I was kind enough to not only _not_ point that fact out to Admiral Marcus, but to also smooth the waters with your _clients_. Would you like me to change my mind about that? Remind me again, Harewood…how many different black market weapons manufacturers have you been supplying classified intel to and playing off one another? Three, was it? Four? Maybe you’d like me to tell _them_ that you’ve been selling the exact same information to every single bidder instead?”

 

“No!”

 

“I imagine it would be pretty hard to get your daughter all that experimental care without those extra credits that magically appear in your account every month. Tell me, Tommy…would all those credits still come rolling in if something unfortunate were to happen to you?”

 

“No,” Harewood repeated, his voice shaking now, “no, Christ…don’t…don’t do that. I’ll help you. I’ll…anything you need, Duval. Just…just _please_ …”

 

“All I need from you is information, Harewood. You get me what I need when I need it and I promise you, once my situation has resolved itself…you’ll never hear from me again.”

 

“I’ll hold you to that promise,” Harewood muttered, the frustration back once again. “Give me a few days – I’m in and out this week.”

 

“Fine. Keep an ear open for me. Like I said, I’m hoping to be able to give you additional details soon.”

 

“Don’t have a choice, do I?”

 

_Ooh, petulance…someone’s getting pissy._

 

“Not really, no,” she said breezily. “My best to the family, Tommy.”

 

Duval snapped the communicator shut, effectively ending the conversation. She twirled it in her fingers for a moment, mentally checking another item off the to-do list and wondering, not for the first time, if she had completely lost her mind. Sometimes it felt like that was the only plausible reason why she had gone and chosen _Khan_ over everything else in her life.

 

It was such a pretty concept on the surface, _choosing Khan_. So rosy and romantic.   The reality, she knew, was something far grittier. Darker.

 

Potentially fatal.

 

Her choice…it wasn’t just about how she felt about him. Choosing him went deeper than romance, meant more than simply wanting to be with him. Choosing him meant throwing away everything she knew, her entire career – her entire _life_. It meant turning her back on Section 31 – on _Marcus_ – and thus effectively painting an enormous target in the middle of her forehead; or, more likely, in the center of her back – there weren’t very many of her Section counterparts who shared her ethical misgivings about that particular brand of execution.

 

Then too…choosing him…it wasn’t _just_ about him, either. Helping him, quite frankly, helped her too.

 

Because now, after everything…well…he wasn’t the only one who wanted out anymore.

 

She was _done_ with it. All of it – the work, the Section, _Marcus_. Done. She wanted to leave it all far, _far_ behind until it was nothing but a distant memory; one that she could pack away in a particularly dusty corner of her mind and just…forget about.

 

And if she somehow managed to throw an enormous, fucking wrench into Alexander Marcus’ well-oiled machine in the process, well…

 

Accepting the truth about her parents with astounding grace and, if she did say so herself, no small amount of dignity was one thing. Absolving Alexander Marcus of his guilt for having kept that information from her in the first place and then revealing it only when it was strategically expedient? Well now…that was a whole other ball of wax.

 

One she looked forward to ramming down the old bastards throat.

 

“And I hope you choke on it, you son of a bitch,” she muttered, dropping her communicator onto the coffee table and then dropping her head backwards, letting it rest on the edge of the couch cushions. Reaching up, she pinched the bridge of her nose, willing away the dull ache sitting just behind her eyes – a combination, no doubt, of stress and her continued lack of sleep. She had gotten a few hours of rest the day before, but she knew she needed more.

 

Thankfully, she no longer felt like she was about to break apart. In fact, she was feeling more centered and focused than she had in weeks. There was something extraordinarily freeing about finally knowing her own mind; about knowing what – _who_ – she really wanted.

 

Duval’s hand dropped away from her face to land with a dull thud on the floor beside her hip. Staring up at the ceiling above her, her mind running a thousand miles a minute, she sucked in a long, deep breath and then let it slowly out.

 

No, she knew what she wanted now – perhaps _too_ well. The only question left was…did _he_ want _her?_

 

Oh, she knew he _wanted_ her. He’d proven that many, many times over and she had absolutely no doubt that Khan did, indeed, have a genuine affection for her. What she didn’t know was just how far that wanting actually went; how deep his affection actually ran. It didn’t truly matter – he could turn her out of his bed tomorrow and she would _still_ be there, ready to help him – but it was something she knew she was going to need to figure out eventually.

 

When Marcus had taunted her with the fact that Khan would have no use for her if and when he ever found himself reunited with his people, she had seen it for the scare tactic that it was. However…that didn’t necessarily mean that the Admiral was _wrong_.

 

Duval was under no illusions – she _knew_ Khan, understood him as well as she had ever understood anyone. He was a leader at heart, a ruler whose people would always, _always_ be his overwhelming priority, no matter what other _feelings_ he might or might not have. No matter what they shared, no matter how they felt…she was never going to come before _them_ with him; never going to be his _reason_ the way that they were.

 

It was the truth and it stung a bit, made her heart ache and her stomach knot, but as she sat there, staring up at the ceiling and finding random shapes in the arrangement of the rivets over her head, she couldn’t pretend that she didn’t understand it.

 

Or at least, that she was _beginning_ to understand it.

 

She didn’t have a crew. She didn’t have a family. But she did have _him_. And for him – for his happiness and his safety…well…she could admit it now…

 

There was very little she _wouldn’t_ do. For him. For his sake.

 

Even if it meant getting left behind in the end.

 

Duval knew how it sounded – how defeatist and self-derogating. But that’s not what it was about at all. It wasn’t about tearing herself down, about questioning her own abilities or worth. It was, quite simply, about truth. Honesty. Honesty with herself and truth _about_ herself.

 

And the truth was…she wasn’t like them. She didn’t have their strength, their skill or their cunning. She would have nothing to offer that they needed, nothing to contribute. If they succeeded and Khan allowed her to stay, she had a hard time believing that it could be out of anything but gratitude – and how long could that feasibly hold out before she started to become a burden?

 

Her feelings for Khan aside, she wouldn’t do that to herself. Wouldn’t do it to him, either. She would, in all honesty, rather not have Khan at all than be forced to watch his respect and regard for her dwindle and diminish until there was nothing left of it. She could just imagine it…just _picture_ it…could see that delicious heat in his eyes fade; could see all that softness retreat until there was nothing in that sea of frozen blue but embarrassed resentment.

 

Duval squeezed her eyes shut, willing away the mental image.

 

It wouldn’t come to that. She wouldn’t _let_ it come to that. She wouldn’t even allow for the _possibility_ of it coming to that.

 

If there was one thing that she was good at doing – her _specialty_ , as it were – it was disappearing. She could slip into a crowd and disappear entirely. She also happened to have set herself up with a fairly impressive _back door_ over the past several years, recognizing that with every year older she got, the more likely it became that she would be deemed a redundancy.

 

So when the time came…if they actually did manage to rescue his people and get away without getting caught in the process…she would remove herself from the equation and save both of them from the inevitable mess that his gratitude would create for both of them.

 

The idea of it...of leaving him for good…

 

Duval swallowed, her throat gone dry. She didn’t want to leave him.

 

But she had so rarely gotten what she wanted in life...why should this be any different?

 

 _Not the time to worry about this_ , she told herself firmly, determinedly shaking off the momentary melancholy that had wrapped itself around her. _Focus on the situation at hand and leave that part for later._

Blowing out a heavy breath, Duval rolled her head back and forth against the couch cushions, attempting to ease some of the stiffness in her muscles. She had been tense all day long – hell, all _week_ long, really – and it was getting worse as time ticked past. Glancing to the side, she caught sight of the time and felt her stomach flip-flop uncomfortably.

 

1923 already…the afternoon was long gone, the evening well underway which meant…

 

The main door opened with a hiss that sounded like a phaser-shot through the silence of the room.

 

…Khan would be back soon.

 

Duval froze, eyes falling shut. At the first thump of a booted foot across the threshold, her stomach – not content with a simple flip-flop this time – dropped like a stone toward the vicinity of her toes.

 

 _I’m not ready for this_ , a frustratingly panicked voice fluttered through her mind. _I’m nowhere near ready for any of this…don’t…I don’t need to say anything yet…it can wait awhile…I’ll just keep my mouth shut and…_

“This looks rather suspiciously as though you have not been resting as you were instructed to, Rebecca.”

 

His voice, his lovely, rich baritone, rolled over her like a wave near the shore – warm and gentle and so damn inviting that she wanted nothing more than to wade deeper, sink into it…let it pull her under. There was concern laced through it now; concern and affection and the faintest hint of the best kind of disapproval she had ever had directed at her. All of it, all together, was a balm to her fears, soothing them away and reminding her afresh how she had come to this point in the first place.

 

Lips curving into a soft smile, she rolled her head toward him, eyes opening to see him standing only a few feet away, all those wonderful things she had heard in his voice reflected in his eyes and writ in the lines and edges of his face. “I did the best I could. Does that count for anything?”

 

Khan’s mouth pulled down into a frown, his dark brows furrowing and he crossed his arms over his chest – an absolute _picture_ of displeasure. “I knew that I should not have trusted you to do what was in your own best interest. I should never have allowed you to convince me to leave this morning.”

 

Her smile widened further and she lifted her head up, not even mildly sorry. “You would have been a fidgety wreck if you hadn’t been there to oversee the work today,” she said lightly. “I’d have been ready to kill you by lunch time and we probably wouldn’t be on speaking terms by now, so all things considered, I think it was for the best that you weren’t here.”

 

He didn’t budge, though she could see the tiniest catch just at the corner of his mouth and knew that he was fighting a smile. “Flippancy aside, Rebecca, you swore to me that you would rest.”

 

“I _did_ rest. I haven’t exactly been running laps around the coffee table, Khan. What you’re looking at right now is pretty much what I’ve been doing all day.”

 

Arms dropping to his sides, he strode forward, closing the distance between them and looking down at the various items spread over said coffee table. “What I am looking at appears very much to be _work_.” He shifted his gaze to hers once more. “It was your _mind_ that required rest, Rebecca, not your body.”

 

Duval’s smile faltered at that, dimming significantly until it was barely there, though she resolutely kept her eyes on his. “Yeah, well…no offense to you or Doc Carlson, but I’ve had a bit too much on my _mind_ to let it just lie around doing nothing for days at a time. I’ve been good – mostly – but I had things I needed to do today.”

 

The furrow between his eyes shifted at that, his entire expression going from disapproval to concern. “Yes. Yes, I suppose I can understand that.” His hands clenching at his sides, Khan stared down at her intently, a shadow of uncertainty darkening his expression. “You…are you…” he paused, clearly at a loss.

 

Heart somehow managing to swell and crack open simultaneously, Duval lifted her arm, extending it toward him, palm out, fingers wiggling in silent invitation. He hesitated for only a fraction of a second, but then the uncertainty in his face cleared and he reached out, clasping her hand in his, allowing her to draw him down towards her. Khan settled onto the floor beside her, mimicking her cross-legged position, upper arm brushing her shoulder and their entwined hands resting on their knees where they touched, both of them looking toward the far wall, though she knew that neither of them were focused on anything but each other.

 

Silence settled between them, stretched out, though not unpleasantly– sometimes, Duval found she enjoyed sharing the silence with him as much as she did anything else. Finally, Khan gave her fingers a gentle squeeze, tipped his head toward her ever so slightly.

 

“How are you, Rebecca?”

 

Turning to look up at him, seeing the honest _care_ staring out at her from within all that heart-stopping blue, she knew – _knew_ – that it had never been a choice at all, really. It had always been Khan. It _would_ always be Khan.

 

Almost overwhelmed by a certainty so strong that it nearly stopped her breath, Duval tightened her grip on his hand, anchoring herself to him. “I’m ok. I’m…I’m better than ok. I’m…” she stopped, sucked in a breath, squeezed his hand even harder. “I need to tell you something. You won’t like it, not at first, but…it was something I had to do.”

 

He didn’t pull back, didn’t move at all actually, but Duval could see the shutters begin to close in his eyes. “Rebecca…”

 

She shifted up onto her knees, turning to face him, pulling the hand still clutched in hers up to rest against her chest, just above her heart. “I need you to listen to me. _Really_ listen. You can get angry all you like when I’m done, but please just…let me get this out before you do.”

 

And now, the shutters slammed closed, all that beautiful feeling wiped clean from his face leaving her looking at the blankness she knew too well. “What have you done, Rebecca?”

 

Scared but unwilling to back down, Duval braced herself for the inevitable fall out. “I called in a favor,” she said, willfully ignoring the tremble in her voice. “A…colleague who works in weapons development planet-side…he’s looking into some things for me, digging into Section records housed in the Kelvin facility.”

 

Beside her, Khan went utterly still, his grip on her hand falling lax though she held on enough for both of them. “ _What_ records, Rebecca?”

 

 _Stop talking around it and just **say it**_ , she barked at herself. _Find your spine and use it, girl._

“At this point, he’s focusing on the operational requisition and staffing records from the end of last year, pinpointing any Section funded facilities that brought on medical staff during that time.” She paused, took a breath and then dove back in. “It was all I had to go on…but I’m hoping you might be able to provide additional search criteria.”

 

Silence. Thick…heavy…crushing… _silence_.

 

Khan’s face was blanker than she had ever seen it, a mask of cold, unyielding stone. “My people…”

 

“I want to help you find them,” she said, cutting him off. She brought her other hand up, cradling his hand now between both of hers and pressed it hard against her chest. “I’m _going_ to help you find them. And then, I’m going to help you get them back.”

 

Another silence fell then…fell and then stretched and stretched until, suddenly…it snapped…

 

Khan tore his hand from her grasp, shot to his feet and bolted across the room. He stopped at the counter that separated the kitchen area from the rest of the living space, hands braced wide on the edges and head lowered. Duval, scrambling to her feet but knowing better than to crowd him, took two stumbling steps forward and then stopped, watching him closely, seeing how he was almost vibrating with suppressed fury.

 

It was nothing less than she had expected – he had, after all, told her in no uncertain terms _not_ to do exactly what she had done – but it still felt like a knife to the gut, to know that not only was he that angry but that he was that angry at _her_. “If you’re worried about possible repercussions, don’t be. Harewood knows a thing or two about flying under the Section radar – he’s been stealing intel for the better part of two years and selling it off to the highest bidder. I would never have done it if I thought there was even a slim possibility that Marcus would catch wind of it.”

 

Nothing, though she could see his hands tighten their grip on the countertop, could actually hear the groan of the smooth, steel surface as it flexed beneath his inhuman strength. Duval decided to keep going – the more she could get out before the explosion she _knew_ was coming, the better.

 

“He’s promised me the first info dump within the next few days. He’ll bury the encrypted file inside a large report I commissioned from him on torpedo technology – you’re already working on some so a report like that wouldn’t raise any eyebrows…”

 

Still nothing.

 

“You…you wouldn’t owe me anything, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she said in a rush, needing to get this part said and unsure if she would get another chance to do it. “I mean, I wouldn’t expect anything from you, y’know… _after_.” His head snapped up at that, though he still didn’t look at her and Duval stared, fascinated, at the tense and flex of the muscles across his shoulders, her insides knotting up tight. “If we manage this…if we get away...I wouldn’t…I’ll go my own way. You won’t need to…”

 

“Shut _up_ , Rebecca.”

 

 _Well_ , she thought as she did exactly that, relieved to let the words die on her tongue, _that was more than I’d expected him to listen to, at least._

“You… _stupid_ woman.” The words sounded like they were torn out of him, ragged and harsh and all in tatters. “You complete _fool_. I cannot…have you any idea what you may have _done_?”

 

“Since I make it a point to never, ever act until I’ve thoroughly vetted the entire plan, start to finish,” she said quietly, firmly, “yes…I do.”

 

“ _Everything_ ,” he hissed. “You may have just cost me _everything_ …”

 

“No,” she said over him, squaring her shoulders, standing tall, “I may have just begun the process that will _give you_ everything – your people, your freedom. Everything that you want.”

 

“Everything that I want. Everything that I…” Khan shoved off of the counter with a roar, smashing a fist against the surface which buckled beneath the onslaught and leaving a dent in the exact shape of his hand in the metal. He whipped around, his eyes wild and his face pale despite the snarling fury consuming it. “It was not your _place_!”

 

Standing her ground, Duval simply tilted her chin up, staring him down. “If not mine, then who’s? I’m in a unique position to help you and you _do_ need help, no matter what you might think. If you were going to find them on your own, you already would have. And since you know well and good that Marcus is _never_ going to live up to the deal he cut you, I’ll ask you again…if not me, who?”

 

He had no answer for that. She knew he didn’t – that he _wouldn’t_ – because she knew that she was right. There was no one else – if she didn’t help him, no one else would. She could see him thinking, could see that magnificent brain churning behind those ice chip eyes. The question was…would it be enough? He could be spectacularly uncooperative when pushed…and she had just given him a full on _shove_.

 

They stared at one another across the empty space between them, neither of them giving even an inch to the other. Khan was in a towering rage, raw and seething and every inch the painfully desperate man he had been the day she had met him. Duval, who had felt for him even then, absolutely _ached_ for him now, but she couldn’t break – not yet. Not until he understood that this was the way things had to be.

 

“I can _do_ this, Khan,” she insisted. “This…it’s what I do…it’s what I’m _good_ at. I can’t offer you much else…but I _can_ give you this. I can find them for you and I promise you – no, I _swear_ to you – that I can do it without getting caught.” She paused, took a tentative step toward him; willing him to see…to accept. “I wouldn’t…I would never risk them. I would never be careless with the people you love.”

 

He said nothing to that, though his expression shifted; twisted into something even darker than it had been, his fists clenching at his sides. “The people I love,” he echoed, his voice, for once, devoid of all discernible emotion. Then, in the blink of an eye, Khan was moving until, suddenly – startlingly – he was directly in front of her, his hands gripping her biceps, his grip unforgiving.

 

“And if you _are_ discovered – either now or perhaps later, when you’ve gone _your own way_?” he growled, looming over her. “What will you do then, _Agent Duval_? Do you honestly believe that Marcus will allow you to grovel your way out of _this_?”

 

“No,” she said, her voice steady as she looked up at him, stoic in the face of his ferocity. “I believe he’ll have me executed.”

 

Khan reared back, his eyes widening in something like shock and then, in the next instant, that deeper, darker rage flared once more in their depths and his hands tightened on her arms convulsively. “Why?” He punctuated the question with a sharp shake, jarring her so hard that she brought her hands up to grip his forearms, bracing herself. “Why have you done this? Why have you risked yourself…”

 

“For you!”

 

Duval shouted the words, her own hands gripping him so tightly that her fingers ached. Using that leverage, she pulled herself toward him, pushing up on her tiptoes to bring her face as close to his as she could, her eyes boring into his. “I did it for _you_!”

 

Hissing as if she had burned him, Khan pushed her away, sending her stumbling backwards even as he retreated, nearly tripping in his haste to get away from her. Duval caught herself on the arm of the couch, breathing hard, her determination battered but unbroken. Khan was once again leaning against the counter, his back to it, his arms hanging at his sides and an expression of such wild, wounded incomprehension on his face that it made her heart hurt.

 

“ _No_ ,” he hissed after a long moment spent gathering himself. “No,” he said again, quieter this time, the word a choked near-whisper. “I cannot allow this. I _will not_ allow it. This…it is not right; it is not _you_.”

 

“It is,” she countered, still calm, steadfast despite everything. “It’s _entirely_ me, Khan. Honestly, it’s more _me_ than anything else I’ve ever done.”

 

“No,” he said once more, this time shaking his head sharply to punctuate the denial. “It is not you. It is _grief_ , Rebecca. Grief and confusion and…”

 

“It’s not grief,” she cut in, holding fast, letting her certainty show in her face as much as her voice, “and the last thing I am right now is confused. For the first time in my life, I feel like my head is in _exactly_ the right place at the right time.”

 

His eyes searched hers intently, taking in every shadow, every shift in her expression. Finally, he dropped his head, shaking it hotly, one hand coming up to fist in his hair. “I do not understand this,” he said at last, biting off each word. “I do not understand any of it.”

 

“You don’t need to understand it,” Duval said simply, “you just need to accept it. It’s _my_ choice to make, Khan. _My_ risk to take.”

 

His head shot up again, hand falling away from his hair, dragging unruly strands of night-black across his forehead, into his eyes – eyes now leeched of all darkness; gone pale and ashen with…fear? “ _Choice_ ,” he echoed, “ _risk._ You speak the words but do you understand their meaning? Have you any idea what they might cost you?”

 

“Of course I…”

 

“ _Everything_ ,” he rasped. “Even if this succeeds…you will lose e _verything_ , Rebecca – sacrifice _everything_.”

 

This… _this_ was the moment; she could feel it in the deepest, most primal part of herself. This was the moment that would change her entire life, one way or another.

 

Letting go of the couch, she started toward him, her entire world narrowing until he was all she could see. She kept walking until she was the one in front of him. Taking a deep breath, Duval looked up, past the clench of his jaw and the drawn line of his lips and up into the breathtaking tempest of his eyes, threw all her doubts and fears aside and welcomed the deadly beauty of the storm.

 

“Not everything,” she said, quietly resolute. “Only the things that no longer matter. This job…this life…they’re no sacrifice, Khan. Not anymore. And even if they were, my choice wouldn’t change. You’re worth every risk, every sacrifice.” Duval shifted forward, erasing the space between them, fitting herself to him like the missing piece of a puzzle, her hands resting against his chest, her lips ghosting across his. “You are worth… _everything_.”

 

With that, she slanted her mouth across his, eyes slipping shut as she poured all the words she didn’t know how to say into her kiss, into him. She kissed him with every ounce of feeling she possessed, giving herself to him with the sort of abandon that she had always believed herself incapable of – mind, heart, body and soul, she offered them all to him in the sweep of her tongue and the caress of her lips. She kissed him as if there would be no tomorrow…as if this – this sharing of breath, of _life_ – was the last thing she would ever do.

 

She kissed him as if he really was _everything_.

 

She wasn’t sure she would ever be able kiss him any other way ever again.

 

Khan, who had been still from the moment she began to speak and then oddly passive beneath the passion of her embrace, shuddered almost violently and then, suddenly, with a growl that she felt down to her toes, he folded himself around her, crushing her to him, answering her passion with his own. Duval, feeling the surrender she knew he would never actually voice, let out a triumphant cry against his mouth, shoving herself up even further onto her toes, her hands sliding up until they grabbed tight to the back of his neck. Holding tight, she deepened the kiss even further, allowing herself finally – _finally_ – to devour _him_ the way he always had _her_.

 

His reaction was immediate and intensely gratifying. Those perfect hands – so skilled, so adroit – scrabbled against her skin, the heat pouring off of them searing her in the best way as his fingers fumbled their way to her hips. Once there, they clutched her frantically, jerking her hips against his and she gasped appreciatively at how hard and wanting he already was for her.

 

Tearing his mouth away from hers, Khan drug his lips across her cheek. “My Rebecca,” he whispered hotly against her ear, nipping at her earlobe. One of his hands skimmed up her back, tangling into her hair and tipping her head sharply to the side and then holding her in place. “ _Mine_ ,” he growled, licking down the column of her throat until he reached the juncture of neck and shoulder, lingering there.

 

“Yes,” Duval agreed, her calm shattered and her entire body aflame. “ _Christ_ , yes…yours.”

 

“Always,” he said, the word muffled against her skin.

 

Letting out a moan, Duval let her hands slide up into his hair, holding him in place as tightly as he was holding her. She nearly jumped out of her skin when the hand that had been on her waist dove between them, seeking out her center through the soft fabric of her loose-fitting bottoms, fingers unerringly finding _exactly_ the right spot. “God… _fuck_ …,” she gasped out, the hands in his hair pulling hard.

 

“ _Always_ ,” he repeated, rougher now, demanding. He fisted her hair, forcing her to look up at him, the fingers of his other hand halting their ministrations though he did not remove his touch fromher entirely. “Say it, Rebecca. _Always_.”

 

Sucking in air like a drowning woman, Duval squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to see him – to see what looked so much like truth in his eyes. “Please,” she said instead, rolling her hips against his unmoving hand wantonly. “Please, Khan…just…just this…just _now_.”

 

“No,” he said sharply, pulling both hands from her only to catch her jaw between both palms, turning her face up to his. He brushed a feather-light kiss against her mouth, his thumbs sweeping caresses across her cheeks. “No _just_. No _now_. Only _this_ ,” he dropped his forehead to hers, such unbelievable sweetness in the gesture that Duval felt tears forming behind her clenched lids. “Only _always_ , Rebecca”

 

Eyes flying open, Duval pulled away from him just enough that she could see his eyes – so that he could see _hers_ , her own hands leaving his hair to land on his shoulders. “You…you _know_ my answer.”

 

“ _Say_ it.” Khan insisted, eyes locked on hers, something she simply could not bring herself to name as hope shining out of them. “Give me the word.”

 

Terrified, all of her confidence lying huddled at her feet – at _his_ feet – Duval turned her face into one of his hands, pressing a kiss to the palm that cradled her so gently. Gathering herself, pulling together every shred of courage she possessed, she angled her face back to his, meeting his eyes with a determination she only barely felt…and gave him what she never thought she could. “ _Always_.”

 

Everything…the entire world around them…stopped – that word, so much larger than the sum of its syllables, hanging between them. Neither of them moved, breathed, only looked at one another, into one another. Then, just when Duval felt like her heart might beat its way straight out of her chest, Khan sucked in a ragged breath, leaning toward her slowly until his lips rested upon hers.

 

“Always,” he said softly, giving the word back to her and making it sound so much like a vow that her heart stuttered in her chest. “ _My_ Rebecca.”

 

Then he was kissing her, slowly, deeply. His mouth moved over hers, not aggressively, not passionately but softly…sweetly; a gentle, coaxing caress. Khan’s hands slid down from her cheeks to grasp her arms, urging them around his neck. Duval responded immediately, wrapping her arms around him, her mouth moving eagerly beneath his. Khan’s arms dropped lower then, banding around her waist and then lifting her, his head tilting back in time with the movement to keep their lips fused tightly together.

 

Blindly – effortlessly – he began to move through the room, Duval’s bare feet dangling above his booted ones. Eyes still firmly shut, Duval unwrapped one arm from around him when he stopped to wait for the door to open, dropping it to his shoulder, then slid it up to his throat. Laying her fingers against his neck as soon as they had overcome the only barrier remaining between them and their goal, she silently reveled in the thundering race of the pulse that thrummed beneath them.

 

 _I did that_ , she thought, awestruck and dizzy with want. _Me_. _He wants **me**_.

 

A moment later, Khan was lowering her back to the floor beside her bed, pulling his arms back only enough to catch the edges of her old tank top, drawing it up slowly, baring her torso inch by inch to the chill of the station air. Duval lifted her arms in the air and he tore his mouth away from hers only long enough to slip the shirt off of her entirely, tossing it behind him as he reclaimed her lips. She hadn’t bothered with a bra that morning so her bare breasts pressed against his chest, pebbled nipples rasping enticingly against the fabric of his shirt.

 

Khan’s hands ran up and down her bare back, sketching random patterns against her skin and sending goose-pimples chasing after his questing fingers. Duval, impatient for the opportunity to reciprocate, tugged his shirt up, earning a gasp as her cold fingers traced the perfect musculature of his abdomen. Stepping back from her again, movements deliciously inelegant, Khan tore his own shirt off, dropping it at his feet before scooping her up into his arms and laying her down against the already mussed sheets of the bed she never, ever bothered to make.

 

Duval reached for him, wanting nothing more than to pull him down on top of her, to feel the weight of him pushing her down into the mattress beneath her back, but he evaded her grasping hands, standing back to his full height. Whining her displeasure, Duval’s hands flopped down onto the bed.

 

“Patience, Lieutenant,” he said, grinning at her, enjoying her sulk.

 

“Overrated,” she shot back, sitting up, her hands immediately on the fastenings at the front of his pants. Leaning forward, she placed an open-mouthed kiss to the skin just above his waistband, her tongue darting out to taste the patch of skin just beneath his navel, grinning at the way those lovely muscles contracted beneath her touch.

 

With a low rumble that was part groan, part laugh, Khan reached down and caught her chin in his hand, pulling her mouth away from him and tipping her face up to his, running his fingers down the line of her jaw. “I intend,” he said, his voice pitched so low and intimate that it sent a heady shock of arousal straight through her already heated body, “to savor this.” He trailed his fingers down to her shoulder then lower, over the swell of her breast, blithely thumbing her nipple and drawing a shuddering, hungered gasp from her lips. “Though I do so appreciate your enthusiasm, Rebecca.”

 

Without giving her a chance to retort – although honestly, she wasn’t sure she would have been able to manage one anyway – Khan bent down, sealing his mouth over hers and urging her backwards once more. He pulled away momentarily to tug off his boots, letting each one drop carelessly before following her down, covering her half-clothed body with his, kissing his way up her throat languidly. Holding himself up on a forearm, his hips nestled between hers, the feel of him hot and hard against her center sending quivers of want up her spine.

 

But as delicious as that was – as glorious as it felt – that wasn’t the part that caused her breath to catch in her throat…

 

No, it was the look in his eyes as he hovered over her, the naked _longing_ on his face as he stared down into her eyes. The hand not holding him up swept up the side of her body in a fervent caress before coming to rest against her cheek, tenderly combing back into her hair. He leaned down, but did not kiss her, only nudged her nose with his, skating his lips across hers. “Beautiful,” he whispered against her mouth. “So… _beautiful_.”

 

Duval’s eyes fluttered shut, her heart caught somewhere between stuttering and swelling as she let out a keening whimper. They had done this so many times now – in so many different moods and in so many different ways – but this...it had never been like _this_ before.

 

It was…beyond intense.

 

It was very nearly overwhelming.

 

“Look at me,” Khan commanded, his voice cracking though he sounded no less powerful for it. He brought his palm back to her cheek, cupping it gently and turning her face up to his. “No retreat, Rebecca,” he implored, “not now.” He laid his forehead upon hers, pressing them together tightly. “Look at me. _See_ me.”

 

There it was again, that longing – the desperate yearning that sounded so foreign on the lips of so powerful a creature as Khan. But she could feel the truth of it in his touch, hear the truth of it in his voice. Eyes flicking open, she stared up into his face and read it there too – truth.

 

And finally – hesitantly – Duval began to _believe._ In it. In him.

 

In _them_.

 

“I see you,” she breathed, the words spilling from her lips like a revelation. Slowly, ever so slightly unsure, she lifted her hand to his face, brushing the hair from his eyes before palming his cheek the same way he did hers. “I…I see you, Khan.” She swallowed, thumb caressing the slight hollow just below his cheekbone as she blew out a trembling breath. “ _Always_.”

 

His eyes flared, igniting from within with a fire like none she had ever seen. Dipping his head, he kissed her, hard but slow, his hands caressing everywhere he could reach, hers molded to the curve of his shoulder blades. After several long moments, he pulled away, grinning when her head came up off the bed, chasing his lips hungrily, her hands clenching, trying hard to haul him back down to her.

 

Ducking under her clumsy grasp – and _still_ grinning – Khan sat back onto his knees, hands skimming down her sides, his touch light, teasing. Duval lay still, watching him touch her, following his hands as they traversed the hills and valleys of her body. When Khan’s fingers hooked into the waistband of her old pajama bottoms, her eyes shot up to his to find him already watching her intently from across the plane of her torso. Once he knew he had her full attention, he tugged at her pants, dragging them slowly down the length of her legs. As he eased her free of the last bit of clothing remaining between him and her bare flesh, Khan edged further and further down the mattress until, finally, she was entirely naked and he was standing on the floor at the foot of her narrow bed, gazing down on her like…

 

Duval swallowed hard, tongue like cotton wool in her mouth.

 

…like _she_ was the most magnificent secret in all the universe.

 

 _Which is just stupid,_ she thought almost hysterically as he dropped his hands to the front of his pants, working at the remaining fastenings with far more calm than she was feeling at that moment. _Clearly, someone needs to direct this man to a mirror._

Heat pooling in her belly, between her thighs, Duval pushed up onto her elbows, drinking in the sinful picture he made, hair a mess, shirtless, graceful hands easing the thick, black fabric of his pants over the jut of his hips, revealing ever more tantalizing bits of delectable skin. Biting her lip, she rubbed her legs together absently, seeking friction, eyes locked onto the long fingers slowly peeling that final layer – that final obstacle – from his body. Once he was as bare as she was, Duval licked her lips, reaching out toward him, desperate to feel the heat and weight of him against her skin.

 

When he didn’t move, except to reach out and encircle her fingers with his, Duval cocked her head up toward him, eyes seeking his, questioning. Khan’s eyes, still burning, were already on hers – _waiting_ for hers – and _God,_ how they seared. “Say it again.”

 

He said the words like a command, an edict…but Duval could hear the question he tried so hard to hide. She could see the doubts clamoring behind the flames in his eyes, peeking out from around the certainty in his voice. This repetition – this constant reassurance – it wasn’t for _her_ sake. At least, not entirely.

 

 _He_ needed to hear it too.

 

Duval, something huge and painful and perfect swelling just beneath her breastbone, sucked in a breath, every nerve in her body tingling, shivers and gooseflesh chasing one another across her skin. She tightened her fingers on his, not letting herself look anywhere but straight into his eyes. “ _Always_ ,” she offered yet again, stronger this time, more sure.

 

The flames in Khan’s eyes leapt higher, burning away what blue she had been able to see until his eyes were little more than a thin ring of silver around wide blown pupils. He dropped a knee onto the bed, and began crawling up her body, urging her knees open – growling just a little bit when Duval let them fall wide, opening to him without a qualm, inviting him in. As quick to accept as she had been to offer, Khan dropped his hips into the cradle of her thighs, both of them groaning at the brush of his straining length against her heated core.  

 

Bracing himself over her on one elbow, Khan reached out with his free hand and caught Duval’s once more, lifting her fingers to his lips, kissing over her knuckles and then down to her wrist, tonguing the pulse throbbing beneath the delicate skin there. Duval, the feel of his tongue sending shockwaves straight to her center, arched her hips, bucking up into him and enjoying the fleeting pressure. Khan, hissing at the contact, dropped her hand, nearly falling forward onto her but catching himself on the mattress just beside her head, his face only inches from hers. Taking advantage of that proximity, she surged up toward him, breasts pressing against his chest, arms slithering around his neck and lips crashing against his, tongue teasing at the edges of his mouth for a moment before slipping inside to curl around his.

 

Khan, kissing her back now with abandon, eased his arm beneath her, locking it around her waist and holding her to him. Canting his hips, he found just the right angle, pressing forward, sheathing himself inside of her and Duval tore her mouth from his, throwing her head back to let out a long, low keen of slow-building pleasure, answered beautifully in the clench and tremble of the arm that enfolded her and the shuddering breath that spilled from his lips and across her face.

 

“Again,” Khan whispered, not moving, simply lowering his head to press his forehead to her neck, his lips brushing her collar bone, the notch at the base of her throat. “ _Again_ , Rebecca.”

 

“Always,” she gave back to him once again, her voice high, her hands scrabbling for purchase on his shoulders, her back arching as a desperate, shaking _need_ swallowed her whole. “Please… _please_ …”

 

Slowly…teasingly…Khan began to move; his thrusts short, shallow and maddening. Duval, on fire for _moremore **God** more,_ angled her hips to meet his, legs snapping up to wrap around his waist, trying to pull him in deeper, to find the stimulation she needed.

 

But Khan, lifting his head to lick at a bead of sweat that had slipped over the curve of her jaw, would not hurry his pace – though he did compromise; sliding in deeper, harder, with every thrust. It was like a tide rolling in, the pleasure climbing up between them in a slow, steady spiral, leaving both of them panting and groaning against one another as it built up and up toward culmination.

 

Finally – _Christ, finally_ – Khan reached down between them, fingers unerringly finding that perfect spot at the apex of her thighs. Duval’s eyes, which had been tightly shut as she soared her way toward completion, flew wide, her mouth dropping open as he brought her instantly to the ragged edge with only the lightest of touches.

 

Knowing just how close she was, _feeling_ the way her body clenched around his, Duval let out a sobbing, undulating cry, her hands clawing at his back, seeking his strength and solidity as she began to fall apart.

 

“Look at me, Rebecca,” Khan choked the words out, his hips never faltering though his voice trembled. “Look…at me…”

 

“ _Always_ ,” she wailed, eyes wide open in _every_ way as she locked them on his. Then, she was sailing over the edge, body writhing beneath him with pure pleasure. “Oh God, _always…always…_ ”

 

With a muted roar, Khan followed her to his own finish, hips only now stuttering against hers before he dropped forward, collapsing atop her and burying his face once more against her neck. Both of them sweat-slicked and breathing hard and neither of them caring in the slightest, they stayed wrapped around each other, Khan slipping from within her body as their passion cooled, giving over to something…deeper.

 

More lasting…

 

Sated and content, Duval let her eyes drift shut, hands rubbing circles into his bare back, soothing the spots she’d abused only minutes before though she knew she hadn’t actually hurt him at all – her nails far too blunt to score _his_ skin. After a few, long moments of shared bliss, Khan lifted his head from where he had been busily sucking a mark into the skin at the side of her throat – it was a terribly territorial thing to do, but Duval couldn’t bring herself to care, quite liking the idea of wearing the shape of his mouth on her body – and nipped at the underside of her chin, a silent bid for attention that she answered by opening her eyes once more and looking down her body at him.

 

Their eyes locked, so much flowing between them…so much said with that look. So much that she wasn’t sure she would ever be ready to say with actual, real words. But luckily, he seemed to see that…to recognize her limitations; to work around them rather than steamrolling over them as he very much was capable of doing.

 

He stared down at her for a long moment, his eyes bright, his expression intense…and she looked right back at him, matching him feeling for feeling. Then, finally, he lowered his head, resting his forehead against hers, their noses brushing, lips touching. “ _Always_ ,” he whispered once more and it _was_ a vow this time; simple, uncomplicated…absolute.

 

Duval knew it for what it was – knew that he did to – and breathed a shaky, elated breath, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and holding him to her, knowing now that she never, ever wanted to let him go. “ _Always_.”

 

It was their pledge to one another – an oath and a declaration, all in one. A promise that they would be in this together. That they would find his people together. That they would defy Marcus together.

 

That they would escape.

 

Together.

 


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I only own the things which are mine.
> 
> A/N: So, one year. It’s been a whole year since I first began posting this story (on FFN). I can’t quite believe it! Thank you so much to everyone who has stuck with me through this process – I know it’s been a long one! 
> 
> Now…I’ve got two links for y’all:  
> joanacchi.tumblr.com/post/97106483860/of-fanarts-sountracks-and-fanlists-so-we-have  
> joanacchi.tumblr.com/post/97881010240/first-of-all-congratilations-to-our-dear-alethnya
> 
> The first is full of some absolutely amazing artwork and an equally as amazing soundtrack. The second is yet another piece of brilliant artwork, this one celebrating the one year anniversary of the story! I want to give a huge thank you to the four brilliant ladies who contributed to these posts – you’re all gorgeous and beautiful and I love you to bits!
> 
> Little bit of M stuff in this chapter, so keep that in mind! And as always, many thanks to all who have read/reviewed/left kudos! And much love to my beta, Xaraphis!

_(the next morning)_

She woke all at once, lured into consciousness by the heat of a warm hand stroking down the side of her face, the rumble of a low voice calling her name. Blinking into low light that only barely illuminated the room around them, she turned her head slightly, blearily focusing on the shadowy outline of Khan’s face, looming above hers. Stretching, loose limbs sliding against the slightly scratchy sheets, she lifted a hand to press against his where it still lingered against her cheek.

 

“I’d say good morning,” she said quietly, her voice heavy with sleep, “but I have a feeling it’s not actually morning yet.”

 

Khan, a faint grin playing at the corner of his mouth, dipped his head closer, his hand falling to the mattress beside her head as he pressed a quick but affectionate kiss to her mouth. “As we are on a space station, the distinction between day and night is an arbitrary construct of the particular circadian rhythms of those aboard. Therefore, morning – as a concept – may, in fact, be whenever we deem it to be.”

 

Duval snorted out a laugh. “In other words, it’s stupid early but you’ve decided to wake me up anyway.” She sat up, tugging down the hem of the charcoal gray shirt that had ridden up in her sleep – his, of course; she’d claimed it because it was soft and comfortable and because shirtless was a _damn_ good look on him. Once the lingering shreds of her modesty had been satisfied, she settled herself back against the headboard beside him, their arms touching. Letting out a jaw-cracking yawn, she scrubbed her hands over her face before sliding them up into her hair, combing the tangled mess of it back from her forehead. “I’m so happy to know that _some_ things never change.”

 

“Nonsense,” Khan dismissed, eyes trained now on the PADD in his hands, its soft glow casting shadows across his face, throwing the sharp lines of his jaw and cheek into stark relief. He shifted slightly, his long legs – clad in a pair of his simple, black sleep pants – stretched out beside her far shorter ones, though on top of the covers rather than below them. “I have been far more considerate of your sleep pattern than ever I was before, Rebecca – you slept for precisely seven hours and experienced four complete REM cycles, thus fully satisfying your basal sleep need.”

 

She dropped her hands into her lap and turned to shoot him a look. “So says _you_.”

 

“No. So says _you_. You sleep far more than I do – I have had ample opportunity to observe and calculate your ideal sleep patterns and have thus adjusted my own behavior accordingly.” He tilted his head toward her ever so slightly, smirking as he gave her a side-eyed look. “It was extraordinarily thoughtful of me, if I do say so myself.”

 

“Oh, absolutely. Your selflessness knows no bounds,” she deadpanned. “I’m a very lucky woman.”

 

“Admirably intelligent too, to recognize such a truth so readily.”

 

“Then again, I could just have abysmally low expectations.”

 

That earned her a chuckle and he turned to look at her full on, amusement drawing lines across the bridge of his nose and at the corners of his eyes. “Be they low or high, I care only that I am, in fact, exceeding them. A man of my preeminent exceptionality could abide nothing less.”

 

“Of course not.” Smiling faintly herself now, despite the tiredness still clinging to her, Duval tipped her head sideways, laying her cheek against his arm. “You’re in a hell of a good mood, all things considered,” she said, his warmth lulling her eyes shut. “Not that I’m complaining,” she added around another yawn, tucking herself further in against his side, “I just figured you’d be all business now that we’ve,” she stopped, flushing and screwing her eyes shut even tighter, a grimace lining her face, “well…now that we’ve…I guess…figured _this_ out. I mean…now that things are… _settled_. You know…between _us_.”

 

For a long moment, Khan was silent, though she could feel his eyes on her. Blush deepening, Duval turned her face away, though her head stayed resting on his arm. Frustrated with her inability to express even that little bit of emotion without stumbling all over herself, she fought to hide the embarrassment licking at her insides. She’d done so _well_ last night, saying all the right things at the right time and managing _not_ to sound like a little girl with her first crush – and now, here she was, stammering like an idiot.

 

The delicate slide of fingers against her chin halted her blistering, internal excoriation and though she kept her eyes tightly shut, she let him turn her face back toward him. Finally, when he still didn’t speak, she cracked her eyes open, risking a glance up at his face, thankful for the light shining up at him from the screen of the PADD now lying forgotten on his lap. He was smiling – no. Not smiling.

 

Smirking.

 

There she was, practically _on fire_ with mortification and he was just sitting there, _smirking_ about it.

 

The bastard.

 

Narrowing her eyes, she pulled away from him and jabbed him hard in the side with her finger. “Stop it.”

 

His brows lifted, the innocent look he was attempting belied by the grin he couldn’t quite manage to smother. “Stop what? I’ve neither said nor done anything…”

 

“You’re laughing at me,” she snipped, poking him in the ribs again out of sheer petulance. “Not very _thoughtful_ for a man of your _preeminent exceptionality_.”

 

Khan reached between them, catching the hand that had been attacking him in his own, trapping her fingers. “Enough of that now,” he said crossly. “You make me sound the most prodigious snob, Rebecca.”

 

“Hey…they were your words, not mine,” Duval said with a shrug, her irritation dimming right along with his mirth. Not quite fully satisfied though, she reached across with the hand not trapped in his, giving him a third jab for good measure. “And you _are_ the most prodigious snob.”

 

Huffing, Khan snatched up the other hand as well, holding both of hers in one of his, squeezing just hard enough that she couldn’t wiggle free. “You were far more pleasant when you were unconscious.”

 

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have woken me up at…” she paused, glanced over at the control panel near the door, squinting slightly to bring the glowing digits into better focus, “…oh Christ Almighty, four o’clock in the damn morning.” She turned to look back at him tugging against his grip and glaring at him all over again. “Why the hell did you wake me up at four o’clock in the damn morning?”

 

Another huff. “If I release these,” he gave her wrists a shake, “have I your word that you will restrain yourself from further assaults on my person?”

 

Duval cocked a brow, grinning with entirely false sweetness. “That depends on whether or not your _person_ had a good reason for waking me up this early.”

 

With his free hand, Khan scooped up the PADD from his lap and turned the screen toward her, revealing a detailed schematic that she was already well familiar with. “Is _this_ a good enough reason?”

 

She frowned. “It’s the schematics for the torpedoes you designed.”

 

“Yes,” Khan sighed, “well spotted, Rebecca.” He dropped her wrists and shoved the PADD into her now free hands. “Look at it.”

 

“I am looking at it.”

 

“And what do you _see?”_

Duval lifted her head, expression bland. “I see the schematics for the torpedoes you designed.”

 

The look he gave her then could have melted steel. “Look… _closer_.”

 

“I’m not an engineer, you know. I don’t…”

 

“The schematics, Rebecca!”

 

“Fine! The schematics. I’m _looking_!” Shooting him one last glare, she shifted the PADD in her hands and dropped her eyes to the screen, studying the drawings as best she could with her limited knowledge base. To her untrained eye, they looked identical to the ones she had seen him working on countless times over the past several weeks. What the hell was she supposed to be seeing?

 

“And I was _not_ laughing at you.”

 

The words, gruffly spoken, drew a quick glance from her, her eyes tracing swiftly down his profile – seeing the strain around his eye, the tension in his jaw – before sliding back down to the PADD. “Yes, you were.” She paused, sighed, the fervent want to always be honest with him an itch that she couldn’t ignore. “And that’s ok – I know how ridiculous the stuttering was. It wasn’t fair of me to get mad at you for agreeing with me.”

 

She didn’t look at him, but she could see his face snap around toward her out of her peripheral vision.

 

“You believe I found you ridiculous?”

 

Duval shrugged, leaned further over the PADD. “I was tripping all over myself, so I don’t see how you’d find it anything but ridiculous,” she said absently, then let out a huff of frustration. “You know, this would go a hell of a lot faster if you’d just tell me what I’m looking for. Or at least maybe point me in the right direction.”

 

“The fuel container,” he barked. “And there was nothing ridiculous about you, Rebecca. I was amused, yes, but only in the best sense. I certainly meant no scorn. Loath as I am to admit it, I found your reticence rather… _charming_.”

 

He said the last word as if it were distasteful to him – though she knew him well enough to take no offense. That distaste had nothing at all to do with _her_ and everything to do with the fact that he had, essentially, just admitted that he found her _cute_. Not exactly the stuff that totalitarian, superhuman dictators were generally made of…

 

Duval, who had paused in her perusal of the drawings to stare at him, scoffed before looking down again, shaking her head. “No.”

 

If such a thing were possible, she could _feel_ the heat of his eyes as they bore into her lowered head. “ _No_?”

 

“No,” she repeated, narrowing her eyes and lifting the PADD up closer to her face to better read the mark ups around the – _removable_? – fuel canister. “As in, you aren’t allowed to find me charming when I’m making an ass of myself. I’m making that a rule, effective immediately.” She pointed at the appropriate spot on the screen. “Why are the fuel canisters separate from the rest of the torpedoes? They weren’t marked that way on the plans I’ve seen before, were they? Are they…are they _removable?_ ”

 

“Certainly not – there would be no logical reason for those canisters to be removed post-construction. Thus my little trick of designing a fuel compartment that would require a custom-molded fuel canister.”

 

Running over that bit of information, Duval chewed at her lower lip. Those odd shaped fuel canisters had made for a particularly unpleasant meeting with the lead project engineer from Kelvin. He had insisted that there was no reason they couldn’t make a pre-fabricated canister work instead of having to rely on custom work. “That’s why you insisted that the canisters had to be custom built,” she said quietly, considering. “Because since they’re being custom built…”

 

“…they will be manufactured separately from the torpedoes. And as the custom build process is extensive, the batches of torpedoes will be completed in advance of their fuel canisters. With the warheads already in place, the canister installation suddenly becomes a far more delicate process, necessitating the sort of precise handling…”

 

“…that only you would be capable of,” Duval finished for him, pieces slowly but steadily clicking into place. She looked up at Khan, meeting his eyes – warming at the approval staring back at her. “The first batch of torpedoes is due to be completed in about a month.”

 

Khan nodded. “And the first order of canisters is set to be completed in approximately six weeks. As such, I had planned to broach this very subject in the Project meeting next week, suggesting that – as I know the design better than anyone – I am by far the most qualified candidate to personally see to the final installation.”

 

“Which everyone else will agree to without a second thought,” she nodded, shifting around to face him on the bed, drawing her knees up until she was sitting cross-legged beside him. “Mostly because no one will want to argue with you but also because, hey…less work for them.”

 

“Indeed,” Khan agreed, leaning back against the headboard, eyes slipping closed and a smile on his lips. “At which point, you will submit a work order requesting that all current and future torpedoes and fuel canisters be shipped here to Io upon their completion. You will direct that they be stored in the empty cargo bay nearest to our lab, so that I may work on them at my convenience.”

 

“Giving you both the space and the privacy to do whatever you want with them.” It was a brilliantly crafted plan – one he had clearly been developing for quite some time. There was just one last thing…

 

“This might be a stupid question,” she said, frowning now and chewing on the skin around her thumbnail thoughtfully, “but…you’ve gone to a _lot_ of trouble for these things. What are you planning to do with them and why do the fuel canisters even _matter_?”

 

Khan, eyes flicking open, extended his hand, palm up. “The PADD, if you would, Rebecca?”

 

She handed it over, watched as he slowly began to flick through page after page.

 

“The design of the fuel canisters,” he began, his voice quiet – oddly reserved, “was not arbitrary. Neither was it coincidental that I extended the interior shielding to include both the warhead _and_ the fuel compartment.”

 

He paused then, looking at her, eyes searching hers. Duval stared right back, recognizing a challenge when she saw one and refusing – as always – to back down in the slightest.

 

“Show me,” she said quietly. Firmly. “Please, Khan.”

 

Without looking away, he handed her back the PADD. Taking it from him, she deliberately held his gaze for a moment longer and then dropped her eyes to the screen in her hands. What she saw there made her eyes go wide and set her heart to thumping – if she’d had any doubts about his willingness to include her in his plans, they were well and truly gone now. If he was showing her _this_ …

 

“Is…is this a cryotube?”

 

…then he was as all in as she was.

 

“It is.”

 

Duval lifted her head, meeting his eyes again. “Funny, but it looks an awful lot like a fuel canister to me.”

 

“The two shapes are _remarkably_ similar, are they not?”

 

So that was it then – he had done it. He had actually come up with a means to transport his people in complete secrecy. Duly impressed, Duval shook her head in amazement. “Wow…that’s…well, I don’t need to tell you that it’s brilliant. You _know_ it’s brilliant.”

 

“It is a start,” Khan admitted, sighing, “and nothing more. The brilliance of it will mean nothing at all until we _find_ them.”

 

Spurred by the mingled frustration and wholly uncharacteristic despair in his tone, Duval leaned forward, reached out to him. Placing her hand over his where it rested against his bare stomach, she gave his fingers a reassuring squeeze. “That’s where I come in. I told you…I’ve got the means. We _will_ find them.”

 

Staring at her, all heat and intensity, Khan turned his hand over beneath hers, entwining their fingers before giving her arm a firm tug, pulling her off balance. Duval tumbled forward onto his chest with a startled yelp that very swiftly turned into an approving purr when he swooped in to claim her lips in a fierce kiss.

 

When he pulled away several very, _very_ long moments later, she gave a whine of protest, mind well and truly blanked of every thought save _him_. Khan, wearing an apologetic frown and staring at her mouth as if he very much wanted to steal another kiss, very deliberately shifted her off of him and tucked her in against his side.

 

“We have a great deal more to discuss,” he said, eyes still stubbornly focused on her lips, his voice thick with regret. “Unfortunately.”

 

Duval sighed, making herself settle in where he’d placed her without further complaint. “Yeah…we do,” she agreed sullenly, laying her head on his shoulder – removing temptation from their immediate sights. “Unfortunately.”

 

They both fell silent at that, neither knowing what to say, content, for the moment, to simply enjoy having the other so near. Eventually, Khan let out a sigh, his arm tightening around her. “I already told you that I have attempted to locate them,” he admitted and the frustration was back in his voice again.

 

Duval gave a small nod, hating to hear the sadness he couldn’t quite manage to hide. “When you were hacking the systems,” she said. “I didn’t say anything then, but I knew you’d never let yourself get caught unless you meant to – I knew there had to be more to it.”

 

“The obvious hacks, while ultimately useful, were wholly intentional, yes. Marcus’ greatest weakness is that he believes his own bravado – he has no doubt that I am thoroughly and inescapably yoked. By allowing him to see my supposedly clandestine efforts to subvert his control…”

 

“…you actually end up making him believe that he’s got you leashed even tighter than he imagined.” Duval shook her head, smiling now. “And the more firmly he believes he has you, the less likely he is to look hard enough to see what you were _really_ doing in all those top secret systems.”

 

“Are you going to make a habit of knowing what I am going to say before I have said it?”

 

Her smile widened and she turned her body even further into his. “We’ve been working together for a while now – I speak your language,” she said with a little shrug. “And even if you’d rather cut out your tongue than admit it, you speak mine just as well.”

 

A soft rumble of laughter vibrated through his chest. “Do I indeed?”

 

“Yes…you do. Don’t even bother trying to deny it.”

 

“Oh, I would not dream,” he teased, squeezing her fingers. A pause. “I confess though, it is… _different_.”

 

“Different,” Duval repeated, eyes locked on their still tangled fingers, nerves jangling as she watched his thumb rub steadily, back and forth, across the back of her hand. “ _Good_ different?”

 

A beat.

 

“I believe it would be more accurate to call it… _unanticipated_.”

 

She frowned. “That’s not really an answer.”

 

Sighing, Khan cocked his head to the side, resting his cheek atop her head. “I had never imagined that I would… _want_ such a thing – such a _connection_ with another person,” he confessed. “But now I have it,” he rolled his head down, brushed a quick kiss to her forehead, just at her hairline, “I cannot imagine _not_ wanting it.”

 

Duval sucked in a sharp breath, her heart nearly leaping up to choke her. “Me either,” she whispered, the admission coming easier than she had expected.

 

Maybe…just maybe…she might be getting a little better at all this.

 

Another short silence.

 

“This man you have enlisted to help us…”

 

Duval couldn’t help it – she laughed. “ _Enlisted_ ,” she repeated, “sure…we’ll go with that.”

 

“You would prefer I call it blackmail?”

 

“Does the fact that I’m blackmailing him _bother_ you?”

 

“Certainly not.”

 

“Then let’s just call it what it is, shall we? I’ve never had much use for euphemisms when it comes to work.”

 

Now it was Khan’s turn to bark out a laugh. “Very well, Rebecca…this man you have _blackmailed_ …”

 

“Thomas Harewood,” she provided, picking up on his train of thought and running with it. “Weapons specialist at the Kelvin facility. He’s been selling secrets to several different black market groups for the past two years, playing them all off of one another and making an absolute shit-load of money in the process. I caught him out a little over a year ago when I was assigned to infiltrate one of the organizations he was two-timing. I was surprised actually. I’d met him before – he’s not at all the type to do something like that. Genuinely good man and all that.”

 

“If that is true, then I assume he had a greater purpose beyond the financial gain for betraying his principles?”

 

“Exactly what I asked myself when I made him. So I did a little digging before I confronted him and sure enough…he’s got a daughter. A very sick daughter. The Doctors aren’t actually sure what’s wrong with her. Conventional attempts at treatment were unsuccessful and, unfortunately, experimental treatments were expensive. Very expensive.”

 

Khan made a considering sound. “I was given to believe that there was no currency in use under Federation rule.”

 

“There’s a lot of things they say don’t happen under the Federation’s watch that very much do. Society is about as imperfect as it gets, no matter how much people try to convince themselves otherwise. Most people don’t see it – won’t _ever_ see it – but that doesn’t make it any less true.”

 

“My cold-hearted little cynic, trapped within a utopian dream world.”

 

“I’m not a cynic,” she argued. “I’m a realist. I’ve seen too much; there’s no such thing as a utopia. There never will be – humans just aren’t built for that kind of thing.”

 

“I wholeheartedly concur,” Khan said, a lilt in his voice that seemed entirely at odds with the conversation. “Humans, left to their own devices, are petty and disappointingly venal. They require a firm, guiding hand lest they run positively amok – which is precisely what my people and I were attempting to provide before our condemnation.”

 

Duval rolled her eyes, shook her head. “Yeah…I think there’s probably a happy medium between utopian paradise and authoritarianism.”

 

“Yes – and all it took was a well ordered tide of authoritarianism to bring all of those happy mediums crashing to the ground.”

 

Lifting her head from his shoulder, she turned to give him a look, her brow cocked high. “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that you Augments with your evil genius smarts and your super-human strength probably had a little more to do with the crashing and burning than that _well-ordered tide_.”

 

“Perhaps,” Khan allowed, leaning down to drop a kiss onto the tip of her nose. “But I fear we have gone quite badly off topic, Rebecca. How can you be certain Harewood will not betray us?”

 

The abruptness of the subject change was mildly disconcerting, but Duval adjusted quickly – and kept her smugness very much to herself; the only time he changed the subject that quickly was when she’d managed to score a point on him. The sneaky, entitled prick…

 

“Because I have evidence that could end him,” she said with a shrug, lowering her head back to his shoulder, “and because I _didn’t_ end him when I had the chance. He resents owing me anything, as anyone would…but he’d never screw me over because I never screwed him over. Like I told you, he’s a good man. Healthy sense of honor… _all kinds_ of morals…”

 

“Which he had no trouble dismissing when it suited him.”

 

“Hey…he’s a dad,” and suddenly her throat went tight, her stomach twisting painfully. “He was just doing what he thought he had to do to keep his daughter safe… _alive_.”

 

Khan’s fingers convulsed, pressing hard into her skin through her shirt. “Rebecca…”

 

“You can’t blame a guy for…” she stopped, sniffed, blinked away the tears that had welled up in the corners of her eyes. “Even _then_ I couldn’t bring myself to turn him in. I told him he owed me but that was only because I knew he expected me to. I didn’t think I’d ever actually need anything from _him_ , of all people.” She reached up with one hand, rubbed first one cheek, then the other roughly. “I may be a horrible bitch, but I’ve got _some_ standards left.”

 

“You are far from horrible, Rebecca.”

 

She shot him a look. “I’m blackmailing a man whose only crime is that he’s willing to do everything in his power to keep his dying daughter alive,” she snapped, “and I don’t actually feel the least bit bad about doing it – explain how that makes me anything but horrible?”

 

When Khan opened his mouth to respond to that, Duval turned her head away and held up a staying hand. “Consider that a rhetorical question,” she bit out, “and let’s get back to the important stuff, shall we?”

 

Khan’s eyes narrowed. “Have we much else to discuss at present? Nothing else can be done until Harewood’s first report arrives. I have already shown you my torpedoes, so we have a delivery system in place to transport them unseen once we _do_ find them.”

 

“Come on,” Duval urged, embracing this topic change with both arms, “there has to be something else that you’ve thought of.” She stopped, frowning. Thinking. “What about a ship?”

 

A beat.

 

“What _about_ a ship?”

 

“We’re gonna need one,” she said plainly. “I mean, without knowing specifics, it makes it difficult to plan, but my bet is that your people are being held on Earth. The more important something is, the tighter Marcus holds onto it and the closer he keeps – it’s a control thing.”

 

“Everything with Alexander Marcus is a _control thing_ ,” Khan growled. “And yes, I suppose a ship would prove an asset to our purposes.”

 

“It would need to be small enough to be practical but big enough for transport purposes, the more inconspicuous the better,” Duval posited, mind churning as she turned the situation over in her head. “Definitely warp capable – we’ll need to be able to get away quickly if necessary.”

 

A pause.

 

“Indeed.”

 

There was distance in that word, in his voice – far more than there had been so far. Duval, hesitating slightly, looked up at him, a question in her eyes.

 

“You ok?”

 

“Of course,” he said, glancing down at her and then away again almost immediately.

 

She narrowed her eyes, watching him closely. “Are you sure?”

 

Khan turned back toward her, eyeing her impatiently. “I am _thinking_ , Rebecca. This is a delicate subject. I simply want to examine every possibility to its fullest extent before deciding on our course of action.”

 

_Worried_ , she realized, seeing the concern that he was trying so hard to hide. _He’s worried._

_Of **course** he’s worried. Who wouldn’t be?_

Softening, she gave him a small, encouraging smile. “We will,” she assured him. “We’ll make sure every detail is as perfectly planned as possible, Khan. Your people will be fine – we’ll do right by them, I promise you.”

 

His expression shifted, impatience melting away and leaving his face nearly blank though his eyes burned down into hers. A moment later, he blinked, looked away. “Tell me, Rebecca…have you any other ideas about this ship that we shall require?”

 

There was a finality to the question that she recognized – he didn’t want to discuss it further. Knowing how hard the subject was for him, Duval decided to just let it go. At least for the time being.

 

“Well,” she said, lowering her head, staring at her fingers as she played with the hem of her shirt, “I did have a thought about that cloaking technology you’ve been developing. I was wondering…would it be a viable possibility? I mean, you designed it specifically for those torpedoes, but could it be adapted for use on a ship?”

 

_That_ snapped Khan out of whatever dark mood he had momentarily slipped into and he flung an indignant frown her way. “Of course it could,” he snapped. “The concept itself could be adapted for use on nearly any technologically appropriate object. Obviously, a ship-board application would require significant modifications to both the internal and external energy loads, but that would be a simple enough modification to make.”

 

And then he was off again, his brilliant mind hard at work, making plans and considering possibilities. Duval, her own mind hard at work, frowned, a thought striking her hard and refusing to let go.

 

“What were you planning to use?”

 

“What?”

 

She sighed, shifted. “You sound like you hadn’t even considered using a ship, so I was just wondering…what were you planning to use for transport?”

 

A beat.

 

He sighed, all of that earlier impatience suddenly roaring back though she could tell that he was trying very, _very_ hard not to let it show. “I suppose I knew a ship would be necessary,” he admitted gruffly. “I simply had not felt the matter required much in the way of planning – a ship is a ship, Rebecca.”

 

“No, it’s really not,” she argued, giving him an equally impatient look – how had he not _thought_ of this? “The wrong ship, with the wrong capabilities could wind up being more of a hindrance than a help. If you don’t have the right equipment…”

 

“Yes, yes,” Khan barked, cutting her off sharply, “you are correct. Is that what you would like to hear? You are correct, Rebecca. Now…might I be permitted to answer the question you have asked?”

 

“Which one?”

 

“My plan for transport,” he growled, frustrated. “Unless you believe that my idea of utilizing the trans-warp beaming device that I am developing lacks merit.”

 

Perking up considerably, Duval swung her face up to his – immediately forgetting her own frustration in the face of an idea that had been swimming around in her head as well. “Funny you should mention that,” she said, enthusiasm spurred. “I’d actually considered it myself. I didn’t invest too much thought into it though since I had no idea how plausible a solution it actually was. But if _you_ think the idea has merit, then I think it definitely bears exploring. You’ve been constructing the prototype, right? Is it close to being workable?”

 

“Not even remotely. That, however, is a situation easily remedied – I am confident that I can have it ready for testing within a month.”

 

“Perfect!”

 

“Though I warn you, the device will require extensive testing.”

 

“Obviously. If it’s going to be a viable option, it needs to work as intended every time. I’m not big on leaving things like that to chance.”

 

He sent her a warning look. “While I agree, I must insist that you leave that entirely to me – I will not allow you to so much as touch it until I am certain that it is safe.”

 

“If you expect to hear an argument from me on that, you’re gonna be disappointed,” Duval said, defensive in the face of what had sounded so very much like a challenge. “I’ve never been particularly fond of playing lab rat, Khan – especially not with something that could very easily _kill_ me if the test goes wrong.” She paused. “How the hell do you plan to test that thing, anyway?”

 

“I have ideas,” Khan said cryptically, “but you’ve no need to concern yourself with them.”

 

She eyed him, not at all liking the sound of that. “Sounds ominous…”

 

He met her look with a smile that was positively _dripping_ with malice. “Perhaps…perhaps not. Suffice to say, I believe you are better off not knowing.”

 

It was just about the most terrifying thing she’d ever heard in her life.

 

_And don’t you just **love** it_, a low, sensuous voice drawled in her mind. _You wicked, wanton thing._

Duval shook her head, trying to clear it. “Fine by me,” she said, wincing at the rasp she couldn’t quite hide. “Though I’d appreciate you giving me a heads up as to when and where you plan to do this _testing_. If something goes wrong…”

 

“Nothing will go wrong.”

 

“If something goes wrong,” she insisted, her voice going hard – her momentary thrill well and truly forgotten, “I’d like to be there to help if I can.”

 

“ _Nothing_ will go wrong,” Khan repeated stubbornly, though he dipped his head ever so slightly in acknowledgment. “Though out of respect for your concern for me, I will do nothing without informing you first.”

 

Something tight loosened in Duval’s chest, though she couldn’t help but suspect he would stretch that promise to its breaking point. He’d made the effort, at least – something she knew wasn’t terribly easy for him. “Thank you.”

 

Another stretch of silence.

 

“Speaking of things possibly going wrong…I was thinking…,” Duval said, breaking the quiet, hesitant now where she’d been nothing but confident before. “We’re going to…I mean, I think it would be smart to…”

 

“Steady, Rebecca. Out with it.”

 

She took a deep breath, preparing herself to jump into a subject that she knew he wasn’t going to like. “We’re going to need a backup plan. A _good_ backup plan – one that’s just as tight as our primary plan. You know, just in case.”

 

Beside her, Khan stiffened. “Just in case, _what_?”

 

“Be realistic, please,” she implored, sitting up and turning so that she could look him straight in the face. “Just in case our plan – whatever it is by that point – goes wrong. Just in case we _fail_.” His face had paled, gone stony, but Duval wasn’t about to let that stop her. “I actually…”

 

Khan sat up abruptly, almost throwing himself off the bed to begin pacing the length of the room. After two hurried passes, he whipped his head around to glare at her. “I do not intend to _fail_.”

 

Duval, who had moved to sit on the edge of the bed while he paced, sighed, lowering her head and bringing a hand up to rub at her eyes tiredly. “No one ever _intends_ to fail, Khan. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.”

 

“It does not happen to _me_ ,” he spat. “Nor to my kind.”

 

Oh Lord, he’d decided to slide right on past unreasonable and straight on into arrogantly delusional…what a treat…

 

“Except that it _does_ ,” she said, firm but gentle, “and it _has_. Thus needing to rescue them in the first place.”

 

“Being discovered by your Section 31 was hardly a _failure_ on our part – we were in cryosleep; we had no control over those events.”

 

“That’s very true. You didn’t have any control over that.” She propped her elbows on her knees, looking up at him patiently. “But do you really need meto remind you about why you ended up in cryosleep in the first place?”

 

Khan stopped pacing, spun toward her, furious. “We had chosen a strategic retreat, fully intending to return to Earth to finish what we had begun – we certainly had no intention of spending centuries drifting aimlessly about the galaxy.”

 

“Right,” she arched a brow at him, “and you won’t admit that any of that constitutes failure?”

 

“Miscalculations are not…”

 

“Oh my God,” Duval snapped, finally losing patience. “I’m sitting here trying to plan the best possible way to not only save your people but also to make sure we don’t die in the process and you’re arguing _semantics_!”

 

“Much as you have an aversion for euphemism, I have a vehement dislike of hyperbole. Miscalculations are a far cry from failures and the two terms are hardly interchangeable…”

 

“I don’t give a single, solitary _fuck_ what word we use. I just want to make sure we have some kind of plan in place for ourselves in the event of a…” she paused, glared at him, “… _miscalculation_. That is, if your majesty will allow…”

 

Khan’s chin came up. “I never denied the wisdom of such a plan. It would, of course, behoove us to prepare for even the most unpleasant eventuality.”

 

Closing her eyes, Duval took one…two…three deep breaths in a row, attempting to calm her spiking temper.

 

Of all things ridiculous…

 

It was times like this she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to hug him or slap the living _shit_ out of him.

 

“Right,” she blew out a breath, smiled over at him. “Well then…you’ll be happy to know that I have a place that will work perfectly for exactly that purpose. It’s a place I’ve had for years now, actually – it’s in the middle of nowhere and it’s completely off the grid; neither of which is all that easy to come by in this day and age.”

 

Khan, chin still up and that thick mantle of arrogance still perched heavily upon his shoulders, cocked a brow at her. “Your exit strategy, I presume.”

 

She nodded her head, forcing a smile. “Anyone with half a brain in this business has one – and I think even you would allow that I have at least that much.” She tilted her head, eyes raking over him, reading the conceit written all over him. She understood it. She even felt he was entitled to a certain amount of it. But sometimes – _sometimes_ – that innate arrogance made her very, very nervous. “Although when you look at me like that, it’s easy to believe that you still see me as nothing but a bug to be squashed.”

 

Those words, so quietly spoken, hit him with far more force than she had expected. Rearing back, stunned, all of that arrogance – all of that hubris – abandoned him, draining out of him and leaving an expression of such stunned _regret_ on his face that Duval swore she could feel the twist of it inside her own chest. Surprised at his reaction but careful not to show it, she simply continued to stare up at him, knowing perfectly well that, if they were going to make this work – plan and relationship alike – then she was going to _have_ to stand up for herself.

 

No matter how much stronger he was, no matter how much smarter he was and no matter how much he liked to pretend otherwise…Khan wasn’t perfect. Most of the time, he was reasonable enough to be aware of that fact – occasionally, he would even go so far as to admit it out loud.

 

It was the other times – the times like just now – that made her all kinds of uncomfortable. The times when she looked at him and saw nothing of the man and everything of the Augment. The times when he – just as he had accused Marcus of earlier – believed his own bravado.

 

Those times…they worried her. _A lot_.

 

They were still staring at one another, neither moving, the room gone still, heavy. Finally and with entirely uncharacteristic uncertainty, Khan took a tiny, faltering step toward her, his fingers twitching at his side. “You do not…you do not truly _believe_ that of me, Rebecca?”

 

She took a deep breath, lifted her own chin – now was _not_ the time to back down, no matter how sorry he looked. “I _believe_ ,” she said, still so very quiet, so very sure, “that there will always be at least a small part of you that dismisses me, yes. Or at least, tries to dismiss me.” Her lips twisted into a shape that was half-grin, half-grimace. “Not that I plan to let you.”

 

Suddenly, he was across the room, hands grabbing her, hauling her up, pulling her against him. Khan wrapped himself around her, arms around her waist, head bent, lips pressed to her forehead. “Do not let me,” he hissed, breath hot against her skin, the words urgent. “Argue. _Fight_ if you must. But do not let me.”

 

Softening – because really, how could she _not_? – Duval laughed, leaning into him, returning his embrace with only slightly strained enthusiasm. “I’ll do my best,” she assured him, “if you will too.”

 

“Yes,” he breathed, dipping his head so that his mouth was at her ear, his arms tightening. “You have my word, Rebecca.”

 

That wasn’t like his promise earlier – this one, she didn’t doubt the sincerity of at all. He had no problem rationalizing his way around simple promises. But to give his _word_ , that meant something else entirely.

 

Pulling back from their embrace, Duval looked up at him to find him staring down at her with a determination that caught her slightly off guard. She reached up, laying a hand against his cheek. “Khan…”

 

“Tell me you believe me,” he demanded, though she could hear the earnestness beneath the command, could see the entreaty in his eyes. “Tell me you know that I would never truly wish you silent.”

 

“I know,” she said in a rush, pressing up on her tiptoes to brush a kiss across the tense line of his mouth, her other hand coming up to join its twin, bracketing his face. “I know,” she repeated against his lips. “I always know, Khan. _Always_.”

 

He growled at that, a low, primal sound and then he lunged at her, his mouth hard on hers. He pulled back only long enough to yank the shirt up and over her head, tossing it away carelessly before he was on her once more. Duval, returned the favor without pause, fingers dropping to his waist, shoving his pants down impatiently.

 

A moment later, they were on the floor and Khan was over her, around her, inside of her and Duval threw her head back, panting, keening as he drove into her. There was no finesse to this, no sweetness…this was raw, primitive lust…a frenzied coupling of pure _need._

 

And it was _delicious_.

 

She raked her nails down his sides, her back arching, spurring him on, frantic for _more_. He snarled in response, thrusting into her harder, faster – one hand found her center, the other curled around the column of her neck, holding her, claiming her, his eyes wild as they sought hers. And then she was crying out, coming apart beneath his touch and then he was howling, his hips stuttering against hers, eyes rolling shut as he pulsed inside her.

 

Gasping for breath, she pulled him toward her, down to her. He fell forward, nearly boneless as he settled himself atop her, seeking out her mouth for another kiss. They lay there together, mouths fused, hands petting now rather than possessing; caresses that soothed rather than inflamed. After several minutes spent thus, his mouth left hers, his head dipped, lips once more at her ear. Hot breaths slid across her skin, stirred her hair, sent shivers down her spine and goosebumps racing across her skin. His voice was soft, a gentle whisper; his words a sweetly given promise – _their_ promise.

 

“ _Always_.”

 

* * *

 

 

The corridors were busy. The construction on the Vengeance had brought an influx of workers like Io had never seen before. So many faces passed her by…and she didn’t pay attention to a single one of them. She walked down the middle of the pathway, head up, eyes forward and spine straight.

 

Not a single person got in her way.

 

Not a single person _dared_.

 

_‘There is something else we must discuss,’ Khan said, lying beside her on the floor, both of them staring up at the ceiling, their hands clasped together tight. ‘Something…pressing.’_

_She frowned, her mind not nearly as quick to snap back into deep thought as his. ‘What’s that?’_

_A pause._

_‘Marcus.’_

Duval stood in the anteroom of Marcus’ quarters, the folder Dr. Carlson had given her tucked beneath her arm. Her uniform was impeccable – boots shined, pants and shirt pressed. Her hair was slicked back into a tight, neat knot at the back of her head. This time, as she stared down at the Admiral’s new assistant, she was every _inch_ the professional.

 

“If you would please inform Admiral Marcus that Lieutenant Duval wishes to speak to him…”

 

The assistant – she glanced down at the brand new name plate sitting at the center front of the desk – _Jorgensen_ , was on his feet before she had even finished speaking. “The Admiral was anticipating your visit, Lieutenant,” he said, stepping out from behind the desk. “I am to show you back immediately.”

 

Unsurprised, Duval nodded. “Lead the way, please.”

 

_‘He will be expecting you – likely has been expecting you since the very first day he put that folder into your possession. He has left you alone for one reason and one reason only…”_

_‘Which is?’_

_Khan turned his head, meeting her eyes. ‘He believes that he owns you. And now, he believes that you **know** that he does.’_

Duval followed Jorgensen down the hall, though the door he directed her toward this time was opposite the sitting room with a view he had shown her to before. This room she had been in several times before – the Admiral’s official Io office, done up almost identically to his office at Kelvin; even the door was the same as the one on Earth. Old fashioned, six paneled and made of mahogany, complete with aged brass knob, knocker and hinges.

 

Jorgensen landed three concise knocks to the wood and without waiting for a response, twisted the knob to open the door. “Lieutenant Duval to see you, Admiral.”

 

He stepped aside immediately and Duval found herself staring straight into the cold, cornflower blue gaze of Alexander Marcus.

 

_‘He will fear dramatics – a scene. He will be prepared for recriminations and accusations and insults.’_

_Duval looked away from Khan, eyes going back to the ceiling, her jaw squaring with determination. ‘But I won’t give him any of that.’_

_‘No. You will give him exactly what he wants the most.’_

_She nodded sharply._

_‘I’ll let him think that he won. No…more than that…I’ll make him **believe** that he has.’_

Duval stepped into the room, expression grim, eyes never wavering from the Admiral’s direct gaze. “Admiral,” she inclined her head deferentially before pulling the folder from beneath her arm, holding it up. “I’m finished with this, sir. I assumed you would want it back.”

 

Marcus extended a hand, eyes still on hers, studying her close. “You assumed correctly, Duval.”

 

She placed the folder on his palm, not letting even a flicker of reaction show as he whipped it toward him and tucked it away out of sight without even glancing at it. Instead, she swallowed hard, lowering her eyes for the first time – pitching her voice low, trembling. “I just…I wanted to…to _thank_ you, sir. For sharing that with me. It…” she stopped, sniffed, “it…means a great deal to me.”

 

“Does it?”

 

_‘He will be suspicious. He thinks he knows you. Thinks he knows exactly how good you are.’_

_Duval grinned. ‘He has no idea how good I really am.’_

She lifted her gaze to the Admiral’s, tears swimming in her eyes, blurring her vision. “Yes, sir. More than I can ever say. To know…to know the truth,” she smiled, the movement causing tears to break free and slide down her cheeks and she lifted a hand to rub them away. “You’ve given me my parents back, sir. I know now…I’m…I’m my father’s daughter. In so many ways I never would have known about otherwise. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to thank you enough for that.”

 

Marcus sat back in his chair, hands steepling beneath his chin, eyes narrowing. “As heartwarming as that is, Duval, I didn’t give you that folder because I wanted to help you sort out your mommy and daddy issues. I gave it to you because you needed _perspective_. You needed to understand just how bad it can go for an Agent who goes against script and I figured there was no better example of that than your fool of a father.”

 

_‘He will test you. Taunt you. He will do anything and everything he can think of to provoke you because he will want to be wholly convinced that you are telling the truth.’_

_‘Let him.’_

_‘He will insult your parents. He will insult me.’_

_‘The worse he is, the simpler this all becomes.’_

She frowned, allowing herself a partially honest reaction here – filial loyalty would do her no disservice in his eyes, despite his current attitude. “While I can appreciate what you mean, sir, I would prefer that you not speak ill of the dead. I may only vaguely remember them, but they’re still my parents.”

 

“Yeah, well, Duval…I more than vaguely remember your father,” Marcus snapped. “Like you, he was one of the best the Section had. And like you, he threw it all away, and for what?” He leaned forward, eyes flaring with challenge. “Both of you, father and daughter, ruining themselves for the sake of a decent _fuck_. Do you have any idea how deeply disappointed I am in you, Duval?”

 

“I lost my focus,” she admitted, lifting her chin, letting the determination show on her face. “I’ll admit that, sir. I broke the cardinal rule of cover work – I let myself get far too wrapped up in my subject. I have no defense for that, Admiral.”

 

“No,” Marcus agreed, smacking his hand down on the desk sharply, “you don’t. I’ve given you more chances than I would have given anyone else. I’ve excused you like I would have excused no one else. And you keep…on…disappointing me. So why the hell should I believe that anything has changed this time?”

 

_‘You will need to be repentant but proud. Admit your faults, seek his absolution but remind him of who you are.’_

_‘And who am I?’_

_‘You are Rebecca Duval, the woman who walked into the unknown armed with nothing but her wits and a folder and made an **Emperor** take notice.’_

Shoulders squaring, Duval stared straight at Marcus, her expression open, resolute. “I’ve broken your trust, Admiral. I’ve pushed my boundaries. I’ve made more mistakes than I can even _name_ , but I know one thing, sir. I am still Rebecca Duval. I am still the best Agent you have – and I have no intention of ever being anything else.”

 

“Is that so?”

 

“Yes, sir,” she affirmed. “You wanted me to take a lesson from my father’s life and I assure you, I have. Connections like the one he formed with my mother, enjoyable as I’m sure it was for them at the time, are dangerous. They’re fleeting. They _end_. And when they do, everyone involved suffers for it.” She paused, her eyes hardening. “I’ve suffered more than enough in my life already, sir. I think I’ll pass on adding to it now. Especially over a man who’d snap my neck without a second thought if it suited his purposes.”

 

“So you’ve finally managed to get the reality of that son of a bitch through your thick skull?”

 

_‘You’ll need to paint me a villain. Give him every reason to believe that you have little further use for me beyond the practical.’_

_‘I can do that.’_

 

Her eyes narrowed, her expression shuttering. “He’s been…less than sympathetic the past few days. He’s apparently taken great offense to the fact that I haven’t been as…eager as he likes.”

 

Marcus shot upright, his glare intensifying. “That better not mean what it sounds like, Duval. If that son of a bitch forced you…”

 

“No, sir,” Duval rushed to assure, feigning horror while inside she was grinning from ear to ear. For him to show even that much concern meant that she had him – the rest was just window dressing. “Not forced. Just… _pushed_. I’ve never taken kindly to being pushed, sir.”

 

Visibly relaxing, Marcus leaned back in his chair. “No, you haven’t, have you? Doesn’t matter who’s doing the pushing either.” He sighed, shook his head. “Duval…have I ever mentioned that you are a royal pain in my ass?”

 

“I believe that has come up in conversation once or twice over the years, sir.”

 

“You aren’t going to disappoint me again, are you?”

 

_‘You will need to solidify your position with him. We cannot afford him to distrust you in the slightest from here out. To that end, you will need to provide him with…’_

_‘…information,’ she finished for him, sighing. ‘About you. To show him that I am fully dedicated to doing the job that he set me.’_

_‘Yes. You are going to have to betray me, Rebecca.’_

“He doesn’t trust you, sir. At all. He doesn’t believe for a minute that you ever intend to give his people back to him.”

 

Marcus froze, eyes widening with surprise before he very swiftly snapped himself back under control. “Is that so?”

 

“Aye, sir.” Duval reached into her pocket, pulled out four small slips of paper. “He is biding his time. Making plans. He hasn’t found his people yet, but I am fairly certain that he is actively looking for them. I suspect that all of the hacking he has been doing has in fact been a cover for less obvious pursuits.” She extended her arm, handing the small squares of paper over to him. “He false fronted one of the drawers in his wardrobe. I found those inside, sir.”

 

_‘…and for the last one, use FT985G4217. Do you think four is enough or do you want a couple more?’_

_‘Little as I care about the fates of your brethren, Rebecca, I believe four innocents losing their lives for the sake of our plan is more than enough.’_

_She snorted. ‘Innocents? Please. A little credit, if you will. Those clearance codes belong to four of the most corrupt Agents in the entire Section. Marcus won’t even question it when I suggest that they’ve sold you their codes – they’ve been bound for the burn pile for a while now. He’s just been waiting for an excuse to pull the trigger on them.’_

_‘Well he certainly shall have it now.’ He arched a brow, scribbling out the last code with a flourish, the handwriting on each one a virtually perfect match to the Agents they belonged to. ‘Forgery – perhaps my most unappreciated skillset.’_

 

“These are security codes.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“ _Whose_ security codes, Duval?”

 

Duval shrugged, shook her head. “No idea, sir. That’s one rule I’ve always respected – security codes are sacred.”

 

“Son of a bitch,” Marcus hissed. “That son of a bitch has actually managed to compromise _four_ of my Agents.”

 

“Five, actually,” she corrected, lips pursing in embarrassment. “Though at least my code remains secure – I wasn’t nearly _that_ stupid, sir.”

 

Marcus said nothing, just growled, his fingers flexing on the little squares of paper. “ _Son…of…a… **bitch** …_”

 

“Careful, sir!” Duval lunged forward, pulling the papers out of Marcus’ grasp before he could crush them. “I need to put these back exactly as I found them. No reason to start making him suspect me now, when I’m finally in deep enough to actually do my job.” She tucked the papers back into her pocket. “I’ll copy down the codes before I put them back and put them in a report which I’ll have ready for you no later than tomorrow night, sir. There are…a few other tidbits I think I’ll be able to share by then.”

 

Marcus, looking somewhat dazed, shook his head. “Duval…how…”

 

“I told you, sir,” she said, offering him a tentative grin, “I lost focus there for a bit. But I’ve got it back now.”

 

A pause.

 

Marcus’ expression shifted, grew sharper – but at the same time, lighter. Almost… _hopeful_.

 

“Do you really?”

 

“Without question.” She looked him dead in the eye, her lips curling up into a dangerous grin. “I know who I am, Admiral. I know _who_ I am, I know _what_ I am…and most importantly, I know what I want. I don’t plan on letting that clarity slip away any time soon, sir.”

 

 

“You know, Duval…I might actually believe you.”

 

Her lips pressed together, a reluctant uncertainty in her eyes. “I wish you would, sir. Your trust means more to me than you can possibly imagine.”

 

Marcus stared at her hard, studying her with an intensity that might have unnerved her if she weren’t so accustomed to Khan’s far more terrifying version of that same look. Finally though, he let out a long, slow breath, his expression clearing.

 

“You’ve done some goddamn good work here, Duval.” Now Marcus was smiling too – an old smile. A _familiar_ smile. “Some _goddamn_ good work.”

 

“Thank you, sir.”

 

He nodded, head bouncing, approval like she hadn’t seen in a very long time now written all over his face. “It’s good to have you back, Duval.” He stood up then, extended his hand to her – the customary mark of a mission accomplished; of a job well done.

 

She let her grin widen; let her satisfaction show. Reaching out, she clasped his hand, giving it one, firm shake. “It’s good to be back, sir.”

 

_‘You’ll have him then. Completely.’_

_‘And when the time comes – when we make our move…” she stopped, smiled over at him, tugging on her last boot._

_‘…he will not know what hit him…’_

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I love meeting new people, so if you’re on tumblr, feel free to drop me a line! I’m alethnya there too! Until next time!


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing except…except for the stuff that belongs to me.
> 
> A/N: So, this chapter has been way, way, WAY too long in coming. I swear…if it wasn’t one thing, it was another. Writer’s block, sick kids, sick husband – you name it, it happened over this past month. I didn’t think this thing was ever going to get written but it’s finally done and I feel like doing cartwheels! But I won’t, because if ever there was anybody who wasn’t cut out to be a gymnast, it’s me.
> 
> Anyway, thank you to everyone who has read/commented/bookmarked/left kudos or any combination thereof – you’re all beautiful people and I love you! As always, a sincere and heartfelt thank you to my beta, Xaraphis...if you hadn’t kept on me the way you did, who knows when this chapter would have seen the light of day!

_(five weeks later)_

 

It had been, to her very great surprise – and even greater pleasure, quite frankly – a remarkably quiet time for them over the past several weeks. Convincing Marcus of her renewed loyalty had taken far less time and effort than she had anticipated at the time. After a week of skillfully orchestrated “betrayals” of Khan’s trust, she’d had the Admiral practically eating out of her hands; a mark, Khan had told her proudly, of her extraordinary skill and cunning. She wasn’t quite as self-congratulatory as all that – she _was_ good, true…but they were also benefitting from the fact that Marcus was fairly well distracted elsewhere. Not only was the Vengeance nearing completion, but there was also that string of top secret excursions into Klingon territory that she categorically was _not_ supposed to know about. Sometimes, having a network of meticulously cultivated connections came in very, very handy…

 

Regardless of the why’s and how’s though, the important thing was that she had not only secured her standing with the Admiral – but reinforced it as well. Once he was gone, their lives had returned to some semblance of normalcy, despite the plans that took greater and more distinct shape with every day that went by. The problem was, there was only so much planning that could be done with the information currently available to them and soon enough, they found themselves at a temporary impasse – nothing could proceed until they actually _found_ his people. Harewood’s contraband intel had provided several promising possibilities, but both she and Khan had agreed that they needed to narrow the field of potentials even further before they began electronically reconning the sites themselves.

 

So for the time being, they were stuck in a holding pattern. And while both of them knew how to be patient…it certainly didn’t mean that they liked it.

 

Khan, at least, had his work to make the delay more tolerable. To his delight – and her shock – the first batch of torpedoes had been delivered nearly a week ahead of schedule; likely, she suspected, at Marcus’ urging. Khan, who had been as close to ecstatic as she had ever seen as he watched the fifty crates being offloaded from the transport into ‘their’ cargo bay, had wasted no time beginning the quality control process. Perfectionist that he was, the standard checklist provided by the delivery crew had been deemed entirely unsuitable. Rather than the spot checking recommended, he had decided that each, individual torpedo would receive a thorough inspection – top to bottom, inside and out.

 

Well over a week later, he was _finally_ on the home stretch, with only six more torpedoes left to be checked.

 

She, on the other hand, had not been so lucky. At loose ends of late and feeling ever so slightly useless, Duval had been desperate for _something_ to keep herself busy. The bulk of the work on the Vengeance had moved into the semi-final phases and thus, aside from weekly status meetings, very little confab was required – and even the status meetings themselves had shrunk in both content and duration to near perfunctory levels. Khan certainly had no need of her – at least, not when it came to the torpedoes.

 

So she had, as usual, fallen back on her standard time killer – reading. But not just any reading this time.

 

For several months now, she had been almost painfully aware of the fact that Khan had never spoken a word to her about his people, aside from the absolute basics. With as greatly as she guarded her own privacy, she had certainly understood his reluctance and had made it a point never to ask for information that he clearly didn’t want to give. But when they had finally come to their _understanding_ all those weeks ago, she had hoped that he might finally start to open up to her.

 

When he hadn’t, she had begun to entertain… _other_ options.

 

She considered just _asking_ him, despite her reluctance to pry, but dismissed that idea almost immediately; neither her nerve nor her tact was up to _that_ challenge. Not to mention, she had no idea where to start and she had absolutely no desire to waste his time asking all the wrong questions. Instead, she’d utilized the free time open to her and set to looking for anything and everything that she could about not only Khan himself but about Augments in general. And then, just over a week before, she had stumbled across a _very_ intriguing title on the stock list of an antique bookseller in Boston. Before she could talk herself out of it, the purchase had been made.

Three days later, after having received a summons to the administrative front office, a small, rectangular package wrapped in stark white paper had been delivered into her keeping. No sooner had she stepped back out into the corridor than she was tearing at the paper, revealing the book that she simply hadn’t been able to pass up – _All in the Genes: A History of the Augment Development Program._

But then, almost as soon as the age-worn book with its cracked spine and peeling cover had rested in her hands, guilt began to gnaw at her insides. It felt…it felt like an _invasion_ ; like a real betrayal rather than the playacting they’d been collaborating on for the past few weeks. It was a silly way to think – she _knew_ it was – but she hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that she was doing something _wrong_.

 

It was just a _book_. Why would he care if she read a _book_?

 

_Tell me, my little hypocrite...did you take my privacy into consideration before you scoured the file Marcus had assembled on me? Did you hesitate in the slightest when you had the facts of my life laid bare before you?_

 

His words from all those weeks ago had floated through her mind, the memory of his anger still sharp and vivid. With that memory had come the realization that _yes_ …he would, in fact, care. Especially if she hid it from him, which was precisely what she had been planning to do. Stopping in the middle of the corridor, the book clutched between her hands, Duval knew that – even if he _never_ found out about it – she just…couldn’tdo it.

 

She _could not_ lie to him. Not even about this.

 

_Especially_ about this.

 

She had to tell him. More importantly, she had to _show_ him – he had the right to know what had been written about him; what she was reading about him.

 

And so, heart in her throat, she had gone straight back to their quarters, spitting out a hurried explanation while simultaneously – and unceremoniously – shoving the antique tome at Khan and trying very hard to not to feel very, very nervous. In defiance of her every expectation, he had, after a moment spent staring at her searchingly, simply flipped open the book and scanned swiftly through it, his brow furrowing thoughtfully after no more than a page or two. A few minutes later, he had snapped it shut with a vaguely disappointed sigh, saying only that it would have been a decent enough bit of scholarship had the author simply gotten out of the way of the facts.

 

Shocked by his easy acceptance when she had been _sure_ he would take offence, she asked him why he wasn’t angry with her, blurting out the question before she could stop herself. He had sighed then and looked at her squarely, still wearing that look of faint disappointment. “There could be nothing contained within these pages that I would not happily disclose to you myself,” and here he had handed the book back to her, his eyes suddenly piercing in their intensity, “should you ever ask.”

 

Flushing at the slight rebuke inherent in the words – she _knew_ she should have just asked him – she had snatched the book from his hands and crushed it to her chest, desperate to find the words that would erase the disappointment from his face. The harder she tried to find them, the more elusive they became, always seeming to slip just a little bit further out of reach; each empty-handed grasp leaving her feeling more and more inadequate.

 

Finally, Khan had sighed deeply, stepping in toward her, hands clasping her upper arms loosely as he leaned in and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Then, with a final squeeze of her arms, he had slipped past her and walked out the door – headed to the cargo bay to continue his work on the torpedoes.

 

Duval, who had squeezed her eyes shut at the touch of his lips to her skin, waited until she heard the door snick shut behind him and then she had utterly deflated. Her shoulders had slumped, her face had crumpled and she had wanted nothing more at that moment than to be the sort of woman who would toss the book aside and go running after him.

 

Staring down at the absurdly contentious object cradled in her hands, she had let out a long, deep sigh of her own, knowing that no matter how she wished she were…

 

She wasn’t that woman.

 

So, she had trudged over to her room, thrown herself down onto her bed…and opened the book.

 

Ten hours and not a single interruption from Khan later, the book had been read, cover to cover. That first reading done, she had then gone back and re-read several of what – to her, at least – were the most pertinent sections, feeling her courage grow with every pass of her eyes over the words.  

 

Now, as she sat, perched atop an empty torpedo crate in the cargo bay, her two hundred year old cheat sheet lying open across her lap, she finally knew where to start…

 

She glanced up at him surreptitiously, happy to see that he was thoroughly involved in what he was doing. The more distracted he was by business, the easier this would be – he tended to absently toss out answers when he was focused elsewhere.

 

“So…” she began, drawing out the word with as much casual disinterest as she could manage – flinching a little at how utterly _fake_ it sounded; she really should be better at this, all things considered, “I finished the book.”

 

Khan didn’t even look up. “Yes, I know.”

 

Duval chewed at her lower lip, the frankness of his response throwing her slightly off kilter. Struggling to keep hold of her determination, she tightened her grip on the book. “I…uh…I was wondering…”

 

“Ask your questions, Rebecca.”

 

She snapped her mouth shut, swallowing down the rest of what she had been about to say. Her eyes dropped to the book, taking a moment to gather her thoughts. “I figured maybe it would be best to start at the beginning…”

 

A pause as he adjusted the settings on his tricorder, the beeps and chirps echoing in the expansive space around them. “A logical notion.”

 

Choosing to ignore his sarcasm, Duval took a deep breath and dove in. “There were three semi-independent labs working on the Augment Development Initiative?”

 

“At first, yes,” Khan said, half-turning from where he was crouched, his hands full of the small side-panel he had just removed from the fore section of the torpedo he was examining. “One in Heidelberg, Germany, one in Valdivia, Chile and the last just outside of Shimla, India. That changed in 1960…”

 

“When an earthquake destroyed the facility in Chilé, right?”

 

“Indeed,” he nodded, turning back to the torpedo, setting aside the panel and retrieving his scanning equipment. “After the destruction of the Valdivia facility, the surviving Augments were relocated, half to each remaining site. Those managing the project never bothered to re-establish a third facility once the remaining two proved sufficient to their needs.”

 

And wasn’t that just the most perfect segue ever…

 

“You were born at the facility in Shimla, right?” Duval paused, frowning thoughtfully. “Is that even the right word for it? _Born?_ ”

 

She winced as soon as the words were out of her mouth, mortified. Squeezing her eyes shut, she shook her head in disgust. _That_ , _right there,_ she thought to herself viciously. _That was exactly why I didn’t want to do this. Because of course, I would be the moron who vomits out a question like **that**._

When she finally opened her eyes again, Khan, still kneeling beside the open panel, tricorder in one hand and scanner in the other, was watching her with a dark look. “Yes, of course _born_ is the right word.”

 

Cheeks burning with her embarrassment, Duval held a hand up, aiming for placating but ending up sounding nothing but defensive. “Don’t get mad at me – it was an honest question!”

 

“No, it was a ridiculous question.” He turned away again, resuming his scan, detached now where he had been all open invitation. “What other word could possibly apply?”

 

Duval shrugged, eyes already back on the words staring up at her from her lap though they were nothing but a blur of black ink at the moment.

 

_Don’t say it._

 

“I don’t know…”

 

_Don’t say it._

 

“… _grown_ , maybe?”

 

_You said it. Jesus fucking Christ._

 

Khan stopped again, arms falling to his sides woodenly and his head coming up. _“Grown_?” He stood, slowly turning to face her fully, incredulity and deep insult warring for control of his expression. “Bacterial cultures are _grown_ , Rebecca – not people.”

 

“That’s not necessarily…” she snapped her mouth shut, silenced mid-sentence by the further darkening of his already thunderous look – which, quite frankly, was probably for the best. “I’m sorry,” she blurted out, the words falling over themselves in their rush to get out of her mouth, “I didn’t mean…it’s just…since you weren’t conceived in…well…in the _old-fashioned_ sense…”

 

_For the love of God, woman, shut… **up** …_

 

She thought that she had seen Khan speechless. She was wrong. He was staring at her, wide-eyed and mouth slightly agape, looking more and more insulted with every clumsy word that fell past her lips.

 

“This just keeps getting worse,” she muttered, rubbing at her eyes in frustration. “Look…I just meant that the book says…”

 

“If the book says anything other than that we were _born_ as any other humans are born, regardless of our genetic supremacy, then the book is _wrong_.”

 

Duval huffed, very much disliking the faint edge of honest _hurt_ she could hear in his voice. Snapping the book shut, she leaned forward across her folded legs, extending a hand out toward him beseechingly. “It didn’t,” she rushed to assure. “It didn’t actually say anything at all about the particulars – that’s why I was asking. It just says that they _assume_ the Augments were the products of implanted surrogacy, but since the records were lost, they couldn’t know for sure.”

 

He hadn’t moved at all, just continued to stand there, staring at her and looking for all the world like she’d cut him to the quick. She dropped her hand and looked back down at the book in her lap, glaring at it – angry at herself for being so wrong-footed and at him for being so oddly affected by the topic. “You said I should ask,” she said, knowing how petulant she probably sounded. “So that’s what I was doing... _asking_.”

 

After a long moment of strained silence, Khan sighed. “Your curiosity is only natural,” he said quietly. “I…apologize for taking offense – I know none was meant.”

 

She scratched at the cover with the corner of her thumbnail, not ready to look up yet. “Of course I didn’t. It’s just…you know me better than anyone has in a long time and it feels so much _better_ than I ever thought that it could and I wanted…I _want_ to try and give a little of that back to you too.”

 

Silence. 

 

Duval blew out a heavy breath, wishing she could rewind the past ten minutes and start from scratch. “I just want to know you like you know me,” she said, sadness weighing the words down. “I’m sorry I’m not better at figuring out how to do it.”

 

More silence. And then…

 

Then he was moving, his steps thumping across the floor – but not toward her. Duval’s head shot up, expression turning pained as she watched him kneel back down beside the torpedo without a word. “Khan…”

 

“The book is correct,” he said, sparing her a quick glance, his tricorder beeping and trilling as he ran the scanner over the revealed instrumentation. “We were indeed the product of implanted surrogacy. The surrogates themselves were volunteers, sequestered for the duration of the pregnancy in on site housing facilities where they were on round-the-clock observation and care schedules. Once parturition had been successfully achieved, they were compensated generously for their participation and then sent on their way.”

 

Recognizing that this was his version of an open invitation, Duval sat up straighter, hope that she _hadn’t_ actually screwed this up beyond saving flaring to life in her chest. Swallowing down the lingering urge to start spouting more apologies – he still sounded so _sad_ – she cleared her throat and shifted slightly, unfolding her legs and letting them hang over the side of the crate. “That sounds very…efficient,” she said cautiously.

 

“It was,” he replied with a practiced indifference so complete that she _knew_ had to be fake. “The entirety of my childhood was exactly that – _efficient_.”

 

Oh, but this was far shakier ground than she had ever anticipated – shakier, she thought, than even _he_ had anticipated. It had never occurred to her that he would _resent_ where he had come from…but it certainly sounded like he did just that. Feeling very much like she was walking a tightrope, Duval ignored the voice inside her head screaming at her to _drop the subject_ and forced herself to keep trying. “I’m hardly one to talk, but…that doesn’t sound like the warmestway to grow up.”

 

“It was not. Save the weather, there was nothing even the least bit _warm_ about my formative years,” he said, still in that same flatly honest tone. “The geneticists who created us had no interest in fostering a nurturing environment, Rebecca. We were weapons to be honed, not children to be coddled.”

 

Those last words hung in the silence that followed, a horrible truth that made her heart _ache_ for him.

 

“That sounds awful.”

 

He tensed at that – she could see it in the way his shoulders squared, the way his head came up. “We lacked for nothing,” he said, tone going even more flat, “and were treated with highest respect. It could have been far worse.”

 

“But it could have been far better too…”

 

A pause…and then he was leaning sideways, tossing the tricorder and scanner onto his makeshift workstation – a table purloined from their lab next door – with a casualness that she _knew_ he did not actually feel. “Perhaps,” he said, the word as falsely detached as his actions. “Though I daresay the approach was successful – we all of us surpassed even _their_ wildest dreams.”

 

There was a finality to that statement that Duval understood – he had no desire to discuss this particular aspect of his past any further. More than happy to comply, she watched as he re-attached the exterior panel, chewing absently on the side of her thumb as she decided where to take the conversation from there. Once he had stood and begun to undo the latches that held the main “fuel” compartment cover closed, she thought she had found the right path to take.

 

Of course, considering her track record so far, she wouldn’t be surprised if she wound up screwing this one up too…

 

“How many of you were there?”

 

“One hundred and fifty in total,” he said, sparing her a brief, appreciative glance for the subject change. “Fifty from each facility. With the division of the Valdivia contingent, there were seventy-five of us trained in the Shimla facility.”

 

Trained. Not _raised_ …not _brought up…trained._ It was a very telling choice of words; a very telling and very tragic choice of words.

 

“Considering… _everything_ , I assume you all were close.”

 

“On the whole. As with any large group, there were exceptions. But yes, we were...we _are_ ,” he paused and she didn’t need to see his face to know that his expression had hardened, “or rather, we _will be_ again soon. They are…”

 

He stopped, his voice catching and Duval felt his pain like a knife to her own heart. “They’re your family,” she said, as gently as she knew how.

 

Khan, his hands braced on the edge of the now open torpedo and staring down into its depths, nodded shakily. “They are.”

 

If she had harbored any doubts about whether helping him get his people back was the right decision, they would have burnt to cinders at that. Since she hadn’t had any to begin with, the heartbreak in those two simple words merely reinforced her already rock-solid determination. Wanting desperately to go to him but recognizing the signals in his body language that were asking for distance, she stayed put, her hands dropping to grip the book in her lap so tightly that it hurt. Later – when he was ready for it – she would offer him the comfort that _she_ knew he needed even if _he_ didn’t.

 

But for now…

 

“Tell me about them?”

 

And for once in her life, Rebecca Duval felt the very great pleasure of saying _exactly_ the right thing at _exactly_ the right time. Khan’s audible gasp, the way his head snapped toward her, revealing the chiseled perfection of his profile, the staggeringly sharp lines of his cheek and jaw – she could see the _want_ written all over him; the _hope_ practically radiating from him.

 

“You…wish to know them?”

 

Chest tight, Duval breathed deep, damn near _praying_ that she didn’t screw this up. “Of course I do,” she said, her voice deliberately light. “I’ll admit that some of it is just wanting to know what, exactly, I’m getting myself into, but…they’re part of your life, which means they’re going to be part of my life. I know that you telling me about them won’t be the same as actually knowing them, but it’ll have to do until I have the privilege of meeting them for myself.”

 

Khan whipped around, his eyes absolutely _on fire_. Before she could say anything, he was moving toward her, erasing the distance between them with ground-eating strides. Duval opened her mouth to say _something_ – she wasn’t quite sure what – but then he was _right there_ , catching hold of her legs just behind her knees and yanking her forward to the very edge of the crate. Even with the extra height of the crate beneath her, her head was only slightly higher than his – a circumstance that he wasted no time in correcting. One hand stayed wrapped around her leg, the other caught her round the back of the neck, pulling her toward him as he leaned up to capture her lips in a searing kiss.

 

But it was a different sort of heat for once. His kiss was passionate, yes; adoring, certainly…but it lacked the ardent sensuality of their typical embraces. This kiss wasn’t about desire. This kiss was an acknowledgement; a tangible offering of bone-deep thanks and fierce gratitude. When he finally pulled away, he pressed his forehead to hers, his hand still cupping her neck.

 

“You will know them,” he promised, his voice as ardent as his kiss, “and they _will_ know you.”

 

Duval, whose hands had twisted themselves into his shirt, tugged him toward her, dipping her head to steal another, shorter kiss from his lips. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

 

He pulled back then, grinning at her, his eyes gleaming with a lightness she wasn’t sure she had ever seen in them before. The hand at her neck slid forward, coming up to brush a quick caress along her jaw. “Thank you for this, Rebecca.”

 

Relieved beyond words at just how far the shadows had receded from his gaze, Duval gave him a smile. “The best way you can thank me is to start talking.”

 

Khan arched a brow, genuine surprise stealing over his face. “You wish for me to tell you _now_?”

 

“Can you think of a better time?”

 

A tiny frown gathering between his eyes, Khan glanced back toward the open torpedo regretfully. “I do not like to leave work half-done…”

 

“So don’t,” Duval said with a shrug. “Go do your work…just talk while you’re doing it.”

 

A pause.

 

“I do not wish for you to feel that I am not giving you my full attention.”

 

Duval arched a brow. “I’m well enough acquainted with that big brain of yours to know that half of your attention is plenty.”

 

Just that quickly, he was smiling again. After leaning up for one last, quick kiss, he was back at the torpedo, picking up precisely where he had left off without pause. For several minutes, he was silent, but as she had told him, she knew how that brain of his worked, so she kept quiet and waited until he was ready to talk.

 

Unsurprisingly, he did not disappoint.

 

“We were near evenly split,” he said at last, straightening from where he had been shoulder-deep inside the torpedo. Glancing down at the tricorder, he gave a hum of approval before glancing up at her. “Male to female, that is. At Shimla, we males were grossly outnumbered; a paltry thirty-two to their forty-three.”

 

Duval snorted. “Yeah, something tells me you poor, sad outnumbered boys didn’t mind that disparity a bit…especially once you reached your teens.”

 

The leering smile he flashed her then was as stereotypically _male_ as they came. “Indeed, no. It made for some rather promising odds.”

 

“Oh, I’m sure it did.” She rolled her eyes, trying not to laugh. “Better be careful – too much talk like that and I might start to think y’all were normal kids.”

 

“Yes, well – odd as it may sound – that is precisely what I intend for you to think.” Khan moved further aft, reaching back into the torpedo. “We were, in fact, quite shockingly _normal,_ in our way _–_ particularly in our interactions with one another. Exceptional though we were, we were still intrinsically human; we laughed and played and fought as all children do.” He paused, the look in his eyes growing distant with fond remembrance. “Of course, when _normal_ children fight, I suspect that they do not generally lay waste to entire buildings.”

 

“Not generally, no,” Duval agreed, laughing. She pulled her legs up, adjusting until she was sitting cross-legged. “But I gotta admit, life would have been a whole lot more interesting if we did.”

 

“Clearly you have never been thrown through a concrete block wall.”

 

“Into one, yes – _through_ one, no. But it certainly sounds like _you_ have.”

 

Khan looked up at her, a gleam in his eyes…but just as he opened his mouth to speak, his tricorder let out a determined chirrup. His lips snapped shut and he glanced down sharply at the instrument in his hand. “A moment,” he said, a quick frown replacing his smile as he eyed the readouts that had triggered the chime. Next thing she knew, he was bent half-way into the compartment; a moment later, he was upright again and reaching for a tool. “And the answer is, _yes_ ,” he leaned back in, arms disappearing nearly to the shoulder, “I have indeed…”

 

“…taken out an entire building with the fury of your teenaged angst?” she finished for him, grinning ear to ear.

 

He glanced up again, eyes narrowed at her playfully as his hands kept blindly to their task. “Cheeky,” he accused. “Do you _want_ to hear the story or not?”

 

“Sorry,” she said, sounding anything but. “I’ll keep my comments to myself,” she paused, considered. “Or at least, to a minimum.”

 

“I suspect that our definitions of the word _minimum_ shall differ vastly,” Khan said as he stood, turning to collect the tricorder and scanner once more; humming in approval when no warning chime sounded, “but I thank you for the gesture all the same.”

 

“Oh, you’re _so_ welcome.”

 

He was back to work again, his attention drifting slightly as another small issue drew his notice. Duval, sighing to herself – maybe his multi-tasking skills weren’t _quite_ as advanced as she thought – knew that she would have a far better chance of keeping hold of at least part of his attention without all this _space_ between them. Setting the book aside, she braced her hands on either side of her legs at the edge of the crate and then vaulted down to the floor.

 

Khan stopped, glanced up. “What are you doing?”

 

“Joining you,” she said as she closed the distance between them, stopping beside his work table and leaning against it, hip cocked and arms crossing. “You were too far away over here.”

 

He stared at her blankly for a long moment, paused mid-movement – the weight of his stare making her more uncomfortable with each second that ticked past.

 

She frowned lightly, biting at the inside of her lip. “If you don’t want to do this right now, we don’t have to. I didn’t mean to push…”

 

“You did not push,” he cut in, the words gruff but reassuring. “And I _do_ want to do this. Far more, in fact, than I imagined I would.”

 

She knew the feeling. _God,_ did she know the feeling. Of course, she also knew how hard it had been to admit to it and she doubted it would have been any easier for him than it had been for her. So, rather than calling further attention to his admission, she turned, shifted a few pieces of equipment aside and hopped up to sit on the table, hands gripping the edge and legs hooked at the ankle. Settled, she gave him a nod. “Well, I’m listening. Whenever you’re ready…”

 

He looked away then, gaze returning to his work though she knew the bulk of his focus had remained with her – she had made the right decision; it would be far more difficult for him to avoid the subject now when she was right in front of him. Knowing though that he had to do this in his own time, she kept her mouth shut and her expression only vaguely expectant. She wanted him to know that he had her attention, but the last thing she wanted him to feel was rushed.

 

After a few moments spent fiddling with something out of her line of sight, he glanced back at her once and then immediately away again. “I…have not allowed myself to think of them overmuch these past months,” he confessed at length, turning slightly so that his back was not to her, offering his profile instead. “Indeed, part of me has no wish to do so even now, but…” he paused, sighed, chin dropping toward his chest slightly, “but a much larger part knows that I _must_.”

 

“It’s hard,” Duval admitted, speaking – they both knew – from experience. “But you’ll feel better for doing it.”

 

Khan nodded slightly; angling his head, just barely looking at her. “There is a great deal to be told. You are…certain that you wish to hear?”

 

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes, her determination to let him do it all in his own time fading ever so slightly. If she let him, she had no doubt that he would utilize every delay tactic in his arsenal to keep from having to actually _talk_.

 

He needed a nudge and she was more than willing to provide it.

 

“I remember from your dossier that you had a second-in-command,” she said firmly. “It didn’t say much else beyond that, but it’s always stuck out in my memory. He must have been impressive as hell to earn that honor from you, so let’s start with him, shall we? He was an Augment?”

 

There was a split-second of stunned silence. Once again, Khan had stopped what he was doing entirely and the hand that she could see went white at the knuckles where he was gripping the tricorder. “Yes,” he said at last, the word a thick croak of sound – she had, it appeared, caught him completely off guard. “Joaquin. His name was… _is_ …Joaquin.”

 

“Joaquin,” she repeated, recognizing the name from what history she already knew but deciding to ignore every single bit of it; it was Khan’s word that mattered, not some dry as dust school text written by an even dryer than dust academic. “Tell me about Joaquin, Khan.”

 

“He was one of the Valdivia transfers,” Khan said slowly, the words uttered with a stilted eagerness that spoke volumes, “and one of the very first of our kind.” He paused, shifting his weight on his feet as he turned the scanner back to his work. “He was five years old when he arrived at Shimla, which made him very nearly five years older than myself. I barely knew him in my earlier years – the difference in our age meant that we were rarely in one another’s company.” The tricorder chirped again and he eyed it before setting it aside once more. “Once I had reached the skill level to be placed in training with the older Augments, it took me very little time to recognize that he was a force to be reckoned with even by our standards. I decided early on that he would make a formidable ally and so I sought to cultivate his friendship accordingly.”

 

Duval smiled at that. “Ambitious even then.”

 

His grin was quick and eloquent. “Yes, and as I had recognized the potential in him, so Joaquin recognized the same in me. We grew increasingly close as time went on – he, the older and wiser mentor to my wild and unruly hellion. I was…something of a handful in my youth.”

 

She couldn’t help it – she laughed. “The hell you say!”

 

He dipped his head further into the torpedo but not before she had seen the wide smile that had claimed his mouth. “Shocking, I know,” he said, his voice muffled but the amusement in it clear. “He was forever after me to be mindful, to be _responsible_. I found it terribly boring at the time and paid little heed to his admonishments. No sooner would he have fetched me out of trouble before I had found my way back into it again, oftentimes with truly _spectacular_ results.” He shook his head, laughing softly. “How he despaired of me in those days…”

 

So much. He had said _so_ much with just those few words. The affection – the _respect_ – in his voice when he spoke of Joaquin was more than telling…it was blatant. Theirs was more than a simple friendship. She had no experience of her own to go by, but she had seen enough of siblings to recognize what Khan was saying without words. “He’s your brother,” she said, looking over at him with a soft smile on her face.

 

“He is a trusted and useful ally.”

 

The words came too quickly – a practiced evasion. Such close knit relationships would likely have been frowned upon as potential distractions when they were younger and shunned as weakness once they had come of age. He had clearly had a whole lot of practice with that particular denial. But she could see straight through it to the truth lying beneath.

 

“I’m sure he is,” she said, tipping her head to the side, observing him closely, “but you _know_ what I mean. He’s your _brother_ , Khan. Your concerned and extremely protective big brother from the sound of it.”

 

“He is my second-in-command.”

 

Duval let out a small sound of frustration, shaking her head. “You’re talking to me here – you really think I’m gonna judge?”

 

He sighed, deflating. Standing to his full height, he turned to face her fully, leaning back against the torpedo behind him almost tiredly. “There has been no one more loyal to me than Joaquin,” he admitted quietly, uncomfortably. “He has protected me to the best of his ability for a large portion of my life. Even when it became evident that my own abilities far outstripped his, he never resented me – never even attempted to sabotage me, a rarity amongst our kind, ambitious as we _all_ were. As I rose, attaining ever greater glory, it was Joaquin who stood at my back, his loyalty unflagging and his gaze ever vigilant, forever on guard against enemies and friends alike.”

 

“Your _brother_ ,” she insisted, eyes squarely on his.

 

A nod. “My brother.”

 

It felt like a victory, but as much as Duval would have liked to enjoy it, she couldn’t. Not fully. Listening to him talk about this man who clearly loved him, it had stirred up the hornet’s nest of fears that she had been trying so hard to ignore for weeks, if not months.

 

If they were successful…if they managed to do actually pull all this off…this unbelievably loyal and fiercely protective man that Khan was describing was going to be back in the picture. What the hell was he going to think of _her_?

 

“The take-no-chances sort,” she said tightly – trying very hard to ignore the misgivings that were starting to stack up in her mind. “Sounds like my kind of man.”

 

Khan arched a brow at that, crossing his arms over his chest. “Indeed,” he said crisply. “A good thing then that his lovely wife, Nitya, sleeps amongst our number, else I fear I should find myself competing for your affections.”

 

He was teasing – she knew perfectly well that he was – but that did not stop her from wanting to correct him anyway. “That’s not what I meant and you know it,” she said lightly. “I just meant that anyone who’s that dedicated to watching your back is someone I’m gonna be all good with. If you were as good at pissing people off _then_ as you are _now_ , he and I are gonna have a lot to commiserate about.”

 

“Fending off angry glares is not quite the same thing as foiling an assassination plot, Rebecca…”

 

“Not so far, no.” She straightened, crossing her own arms over her chest in a mirror of his posture – thoughts she didn’t want now a steady itch in the back of her mind, all of her old anxieties gathering, building. “Give it time though. I’m telling you, Khan…some of those engineers are hanging on by a thread. The next time you make them re-work their drawings because you’ve come up with a more efficient way to flush a toilet, they’ll be out for blood, mark my words. I’m talking full on lynch mob stuff here – we’ll be dodging pitchforks for days!”

 

“How delightfully medieval – I do hope they will have torches as well. A lynching without torches is no sort of lynching at all.”

 

“Who knows?” Her stomach had knotted up tight now; her dread a thick lump in the middle of her chest…but still, she ignored it. Played it off. Pretended it wasn’t even there. “You piss them off enough and there _might_ even be tar and feathers involved...”

 

Khan barked out a laugh, thoroughly enjoying their exchange. Duval laughed too, still trying to maintain her façade of calm, but there was an edge to it, a roughness that must have been far more obvious than she had intended it to be. That lovely laughter broke off abruptly, his easy posture tensing as his eyes were on hers, hawk-like in their sudden intensity.

 

“Something has upset you.”

 

She stopped laughing, the smile slowly fading from her face. He wasn’t going to let it go; she knew him too well to think that he would. All she could hope to do now was mitigate the damage as best she could. “I’m fine...”

 

“You are not fine,” he snapped, pushing away from the torpedo and taking a single step in her direction. “What is _wrong,_ Rebecca?”

 

Flinching away from his concern, she dropped her eyes from his, focusing on his boots. “Seriously…it’s nothing. Just me being… _me_.”

 

“ _Rebecca_ …”

 

That tone. That warning tone that said _speak, or else_. She _hated_ it when he said her name like that.

 

“ _Fine_ ,” she huffed, snapping her head back up to meet his eyes once more, her expression stony. “He’s going to hate me, you know,” she said hotly, hiding her fear behind a wall of anger. “I mean, they’ll all dislike me, but Joaquin…if he’s everything you’ve said he is…he’s going to absolutely _hate_ me. And he’s going to disapprove of our…of _us_ …something fierce.”

 

Khan’s expression shuttered, his jaw clenched. Between that and his sudden silence…she knew how right she really was. For the first time, she understood the full breadth of the canyon that stood between them; the canyon that it had been all too easy to ignore when it was just the two of them. The canyon that suddenly loomed large, threatening to swallow her whole.

 

Duval shook her head, letting out a bitter laugh. “Which, of course, you already realized.”

 

“It will be difficult at first, of course…”

 

“Difficult?” She whipped her head back up, pinning him with a look that was pure fire. “The last normal humans they saw were trying to kill them. I think _difficult_ is one hell of an understatement for how it’s gonna be at first, Khan. I’ll be lucky if they don’t try to kill me on sight.”

 

“They would not _dare_ ,” he insisted, hands balling into fists at his sides. “I will see to that.”

 

“And I’m sure that’ll be enough for some of them. But I can’t believe they’re _all_ like Joaquin. I know the history, Khan. I know that not all of your people are _good_ people. What’s it gonna be like with _them_?”

 

“I will protect you,” he declared, his eyes flashing, fear and determination warring in the icy depths of his gaze. “No one will _dare_ touch you against my will.”

 

She smiled, a harsh, angry twist of her lips. “Oh yeah, that’ll work. That won’t make them resent me _at all_. Not to mention, it’ll make it abundantly clear to _everybody_ that I’m nothing but a burden; a useless, fragile little idiot who would never survive without your _protection_.”

 

Her voice broke on the last word, the façade of anger finally giving way to the fear simmering beneath. Khan was instantly in front of her, his hands cradling her face, turning it up to his with a gentleness that was at odds with the inferno raging in his eyes.

 

“You will show them how wrong they are,” he declared, his voice all heat and vehemence, “just as you did me. I, of all people, know how adept you are at proving your worth – you, who have become indispensable to me.”

 

Duval jerked away, unable to bear his touch at the moment. “And just how _indispensable_ will I be when you’re suddenly surrounded by people stronger, smarter and more capable than I could ever _dream_ of being? How long will it take before you start to see what they’re talking about? Before you start to resent the fact that you have to _protect_ me from the people you care about most?” She let out another choking gurgle of laughter, dropping her feet to the floor and shoving off the table, desperate to get _away_ from the entire fucking _mess_. “This is…it’s never going to work. It was _stupid_ to think that this…that _we…_ could ever actually…”

 

“No,” Khan snarled, one arm catching her around the waist before she had taken even the first step away from him. He hauled her to him, her back pressed firm to his front, his arms engulfing her and holding tight. He lowered his head, lips finding the shell of her ear. “I will not allow you to do this, Rebecca. You will _never_ be a burden to me – _never_. I will not allow you to walk away from me over this…not now. Not _ever_.”

 

Duval held herself stiff in his arms, staring straight ahead but seeing nothing but the bleak images painted by her mind – images of a sea of backs turned to her. Of _Khan’s_ back turned to her.“I wouldn’t just walk away,” she said, hearing her voice as if from a distance, wincing inwardly at the flatness of it. “You don’t…I told you before…I can have my own plan in place for once we’ve gotten your people back. I would still help you even if we weren’t… _together_ …”

 

“ _Enough_ ,” Khan hissed, his grip on her tightening. “ _Enough_ , Rebecca.”

 

She wanted nothing more than to give in, to just collapse back into him and let him soothe away all of her fears. But she just couldn’t…

 

“You think I want it to be this way? I don’t. I don’t want to think these things. I don’t even want to _know_ about them. But I _do_ think it and I _do_ know it and I can’t pretend that I don’t realize how much better off you would be without me…”

 

“No,” Khan insisted, whirling her around to face him, his hands gripping her upper arms so tight that it hurt. “You are _wrong_ , Rebecca.”

 

She stared straight ahead, eyes tracing the way the fabric of his shirt shifted over the line of his collar bone. “I’m not wrong.”

 

“ _Shut up!_ ” He snarled the words at her, infuriated. “I will hear no more of this. Not one word more. You will listen to me, Rebecca Duval, and you will listen well, is that clear?”

 

Duval closed her eyes against a sudden upwelling of hot tears, lips trembling. “Do I have a choice?”

 

“No.”

 

“Then it’s clear. Talk.”

 

“Excellent,” Khan snapped, hands releasing her arms only to reclaim their earlier positions, cradling her face, his touch still firm but far gentler than it had been. “You will look at me when I say this, Rebecca.”

 

“Fine,” she muttered, forcing her eyes open and allowing him to lift her face, not even flinching when a tear escaped from the corner of her eye and dripped down onto his hand. “Happy?”

 

He said nothing to that, ignoring her words in favor of staring down into her face, his expression somehow furious and sad all at once. His thumbs rubbed across her cheeks, his touch gentling even further.

 

“Yes,” he said at last, his voice quiet but firm, “it will be difficult. Yes, they will disdain you – and yes, likely Joaquin most of all. Any acceptance you gain at first will be grudging at best and utterly feigned at worst. You will be insulted and you will be demeaned and you will be dismissed.”

 

Memories clambered, clawing to the surface; harsh words and harsher punishments, hateful accusations and vicious insinuations. Her vision blurred, tears she could no longer hold back blinding her and she let out a harsh, rasping attempt at a laugh. “So…nothing new then,” she bit out.

 

He let out a sigh, his breath ghosting across her skin as he leaned forward, laying his forehead against hers. “Nothing that you are not strong enough to survive,” he murmured. “Nothing that you cannot correct through little more than your own wit and cunning.”

 

He sounded so certain – so very, very _sure_. Part of her still thought the whole thing would prove to be a ticking time bomb, but at that moment, wrapped up so tightly in him and hearing the unflinching confidence that he had in her…

 

“You really think I can do it?” Her voice was tiny, a mere wisp of sound – but she needed to hear it. She needed his faith in this, because if Rebecca Duval was anything, she was a realist. That she had earned Khan’s acceptance, let alone his respect and his…anything else, was a miracle to her. She simply couldn’t find it in her to believe that that particular bolt of lightning was going to strike twice.  

 

“Show them,” he said, his voice low, resolute, “show them what you showed _me_ and I promise you, Rebecca, they will do more than merely _accept_ you.”

 

She wanted to believe him – and not just for the sake of her relationship with _him_. They were, as he had said so many times, a family. A _family_. It had been so _long_ since she’d had any kind of real family. To be part of _his_ …

 

_God_ …it would be worth the effort. It would be worth _any_ effort…

 

She closed her eyes, loosing the tears that had pooled there. “I know I’ve said this too many times before but, _Christ_ …I am so _bad_ at this.”

 

Khan’s forehead lifted from hers, but then his lips were on first one cheek and then the other, kissing away her wayward tears. “Yes,” he agreed, “you really rather are.”

 

Duval laughed then; a real, honest laugh that she felt from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. It burst out of her, a release of all the conflicting, wrenching emotions that had been tearing at her. Still laughing, she dropped her head forward, her forehead coming to rest against his chest. Khan’s hands slid backwards, one curling around her neck and the other into her hair; no longer holding her to him, but simply holding her.

 

They stood that way for several long moments before Duval, after releasing one long, deep, cleansing breath, lifted her head and stepped back from Khan whose hands fell back to his sides. He cocked his head, eyes running over her face searchingly.

 

“Better?”

 

Mouth turning up at the corner in a half-smile, Duval nodded once. “Better.” She laughed again then. “I really need to remember how _not_ to have an emotional breakdown before we get your people back. I doubt going to pieces over whether or not people _like_ me is going to endear me to anybody. Hell…” she shook her head, “it doesn’t even endear me to _me_.”

 

“Your old armor will indeed serve you well with them,” Khan agreed bluntly, then narrowed his at her in warning. “However, do _not_ take that to mean that it will serve you equally as well with _me_. I spent a great deal of time earning my way past those impenetrable walls of yours; I would not take well to being denied admittance now.”

 

“Mmm,” Duval returned his narrow-eyed look with one of her own, “ever heard the one about the pot and the kettle?”    

 

“I seem to recall your having mentioned them in the past, yes…”

 

“Good,” she chirped, her good mood slowly returning as she reached out to tap her finger in the center of his chest, “then you know exactly what I was going to say.”

 

“I do,” he said gravely, reaching up and catching her finger where it pressed against his sternum, drawing her hand into his and holding it there, just over his heart. “And I promise you that, when the time comes, nothing will change between us – at least, not privately. I…cannot make the same assurances for our public interactions.”

 

“I’m not stupid, Khan,” she assured him. “And I’m not unrealistic. You’re the leader – you have an image to maintain. An image that isn’t going to include gazing longingly at the little human woman when there’s work to be done.”

 

He frowned. “Rebecca…”

 

“I’m not upset,” she continued, recognizing his hesitance. “Honestly, I’m not. In fact, I’m actually perfectly fine with the idea of keeping our relationship behind closed doors. I’ve never been terribly comfortable with public displays of affection.”

 

His expression lightened considerably. “Nor I,” he admitted, giving her fingers a squeeze. “So I suppose in that, at least, we can be in full and easy agreement.”

 

“Absolutely.”

 

They both fell silent then, comforted by the other’s presence as they both stared blindly into the future that lay before them. Eventually, they separated – Khan returning to his work, Duval simply moving to the opposite side of the torpedo from where he was working, elbows hooking over the open edge and chin resting on one fisted hand as she watched him continue his examination.

 

“You know,” she said carefully after nearly twenty minutes of watching him work, “we haven’t actually discussed what the plan is going to be _after_ we have your people…”

 

Khan kept silent for another moment, though his eyes leapt up to hers before dropping away again. “That,” he said as he slid further aft, “will depend entirely upon the circumstances we find ourselves in at the time, I suppose.”

 

Duval’s eyes narrowed. That had been a bit…casual. _Too_ casual. “Either you’ve gotten worse at lying or I’ve gotten better at seeing through you, because I didn’t believe a word of that.”

 

She had surprised him with that; she could tell by the sudden tension in his arms, in the way his fingers tightened on the wiring harness he was looking over. “It was not wholly a lie,” he said sharply, grudgingly. “Our course will, in fact, depend very heavily upon the circumstances we find ourselves in.”

 

“Oh, I’m sure it will. But I know you well enough to know that you have some kind of ultimate endgame in mind.” She took a breath, blew it out – decided to just go for broke. “I’m just really hoping it has absolutely nothing to do with revenge.”

 

A beat.

 

“And if it does?”

 

It was her turn to pause then, the weight of that possibility sitting heavy on her shoulders. “Then I’d have to ask you to reconsider.”

 

“Why?”

 

She suddenly felt very, very tired. “Because it’s a bad idea. You’ve already lost enough. I’d hate to see you lose even more – which you _would_. No matter how good you are, no matter how good your people are, you don’t have the manpower to take down an entire _planet_ , Khan.”

 

Another moment of silence.

 

“And if I still decide to seek the vengeance that we have earned ten times over, despite your protests?”

 

Duval sighed, resigned. “Then I’ll be right there with you, seeing your bad idea through to the bitter end. I won’t like it, but I will be at your side, no matter what.”

 

Frowning again, Khan pressed his lips together tightly, looking back down at the wires in his hand. “That is not nearly as reassuring as I believe you meant it to be.”

 

“No?”

 

“No,” he confirmed, dropping the wires back in place and turning to dump his tricorder and scanner into a heap on his work table. “Strangely enough, the idea of your being willing to sacrifice yourself for a cause you do not believe in does _not_ make me happy, Rebecca.”

 

Her eyes were on his back, following the lines of shifting muscle beneath all that black fabric. “I believe in you,” she said simply. “I don’t need any other cause than that.”  

 

Silence.

 

“Once my people are safely within our care,” Khan said finally, his head up and his shoulders squared, “my plan is that we should, with all possible speed, leave Federation space as far behind us as we can reasonably manage. From there, it will be, as I said, rather dependent upon our particular situation.”

 

Relief, cool and welcome, flooded her veins, relaxing her. “I think that might just be the best news I’ve heard in a very long time.”

 

He turned then, leaning back against the table much as she had done earlier. “Then you approve of _that_ plan, then?”

 

“The further away from all of _this_ we can get,” she declared, gesturing to the cargo bay around them – to Io and Section 31 and the Federation in general, “the happier I’ll be.”

 

“Another point of full and easy agreement then,” he said, his smile faint, but there. “We have earned a bit of peace, I think – something I am well aware that we will never find here.”

 

“Lucky for us,” Duval continued cheerfully, pushing up and away from the torpedo and starting toward him, “there’s a whole universe of other options out there. It might take some time, but we’ll find something that fits.” She sidled up next to him, nudging him over slightly before pulling herself up so that she was sitting on the table once more, her shoulder touching his arm. “I’m sure there’s at least one planet out there with a population that’s suitably advanced and easily manipulated. All we have to do is find it, make a showy entrance and declare ourselves Gods. Before you know it, they’ll be telling stories about how you turned yourself into…I don’t know…a fish and impregnated an entire village worth of nubile young virgins.”

 

He nearly choked on the laugh _that_ had earned her, head turning to look down at her with no small amount of delight. “That sounds exhausting,” he said lightly. “And where, might I ask, will _you_ be while I am committing such egregious acts of interspecial debauchery?”

 

She grinned up at him, quite proud of herself. “Probably gnashing my teeth and plotting to unleash my ineffectively vengeful wrath upon your poor, unsuspecting hoard of illegitimate progeny…you know, the norm for us betrayed Goddesses.”

 

“So we shall be following the Grecian model in this future you imagine for us?”

 

“Well, I _would_ have gone the Hindu route, but the only Goddess I’m familiar with in that particular pantheon is Kali and I thought the glowing red eyes and garland of severed heads _might_ send the wrong message.”

 

Khan let out another rumble of laughter, leaning more of his weight against her. “I forget, sometimes, just how clever you can be.”

 

Duval knocked his arm with her elbow. “Funny…I never forget how big of a prick _you_ can be.”

 

His grin turned wicked. “You were more right than I initially gave you credit for earlier – given enough time, you and Joaquin will be great friends, indeed. I cannot tell you how often he has expressed _just_ such a sentiment.”

 

It was a bit of a non-sequitur, but she saw the conversation shift for what it was. He had not actually been able to tell her everything that he had wanted to earlier. This was his incredibly un-subtle way of bringing the conversation full circle.

 

Feeling even more ready to hear it now than she had been before, Duval shot him a wicked grin of her own. “I look forward to it. Lord knows the universe needs more people willing to tell you to your face that you’re an arrogant ass.”

 

He opened his mouth to fire back what surely would have been an equally scathing response, but Duval cut him off, slapping her palm down onto the table beside her loudly. “Now,” she barked out, “enough idle chit-chat. I was promised a story, and I want to hear it! So get to telling it already…I’m dying to hear about all those youthful follies and indiscretions.”

 

“ _Now_ you are interested,” he sniffed, crossing his arms over his chest. “I seem to recall that you preferred to concern yourself elsewhere when first I attempted to tell those very tales.”

 

“Funny because _I_ seem to recall _you_ bolting for the nearest available subject change when I was trying to get you to tell _any_ tales at all.”

 

They stared one another down in mock-challenge for a moment – but only a moment. Then, they were both smiling and then laughing and then – _finally_ – in the midst of their amusement, Khan began to speak.

 

The words poured past his lips, a steady flow of memories, painting bright and vivid pictures of his youth. He introduced her vicariously to one new name after another. He regaled her with stories of McPherson and Otto and Ismael…of Ling and Frankel and Galina and Ysabeth. More and more names and stories came pouring out.

 

Stories about fistfights in the dormitory and stolen kisses in the mess hall; about vicious pranks and tearful apologies. And through it all, through every single story, she learned one great truth.

 

The close-knit family of extraordinary children who had grown into even more extraordinary adults would, she had no doubt, prove taxing and trying and utterly, utterly exhausting. But no matter what, there was one thing she would never, ever have to worry about.

 

She would certainly never be bored.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So I have been lucky enough to have even MORE gorgeous artwork created for my story. Please go give the following links a look-see:
> 
> thescienceofdepiction.tumblr.com/post/98158713816/a-remnant-of-a-time-long-past-another  
> thescienceofdepiction.tumblr.com/post/100643670461/more-fanart-for-fanfiction-this-time  
> joanacchi.tumblr.com/post/99007855715/soooooooooo-it-took-me-a-while-but-i-finally
> 
> Seriously…both of these ladies are amazingly talented and I am in awe of everything that they do, not just the pieces they are kind enough to create for this story!
> 
> And hey…if you’re ever on tumblr, give me a look-see too. Alethnya here, @alethnya there…I’m alethnya everywhere! ;)


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thanks to all who read/commented/bookmarked/left kudos...you're all awesome! Huge thanks as always to my beta, Xaraphis -- you're awesome and I love you!

_(Two Weeks Later)_

 

“Can you _please_ just stop so we can talk about this for a minute?”

 

“I have every intention of talking about it,” Khan snapped, turning sharply down another of the Vengeance’s myriad corridors, nearly mowing down a fresh-faced Ensign in the process. “I plan to _talk_ about it with Doctor Sung _at length_ as soon as I reach the bridge.”

 

Duval tossed an apologetic look at the wide-eyed young man who had flattened himself against the wall, but didn’t dare slow her pace. Damn near running to keep up with Khan’s far longer strides, she grit her teeth and sent a look of utter frustration at his back. “This isn’t nearly as big a deal as you’re making it out to be,” she said, imploring but resigned; reasoning with him when he was in this state might be useless but she was determined to try anyway. “You’re only acting like this because you’re frustrated about… _other_ things.”

 

He stopped in his tracks and Duval yelped as she very nearly ran right into him. “Jesus…a _warning_ would have been…”

 

Khan whipped around toward her, leaning in, his furious face far too close to hers for her liking. “And why might that be, Lieutenant? If I am frustrated about _other things,_ as you so diplomatically put it, who owns the fault for _that_?”

 

_Oh…you prick…_

They were still waiting to hear back from Harewood – though is last communique had suggested that he believed he was closing in on something. That had been nearly a week ago though and Khan’s patience had been growing thinner and thinner with each day that passed without word. She absolutely understood his frustration; but understanding it and condoning the miserable attitude that had steadily begun to go along with it were two _very_ different things.

 

She had let it slide for the past few days, though she had spent most of them biting her tongue.

 

Eyes narrowing and temper surging to meet the arrogance in his posture and the challenge in his eyes, she tightened her grip on the PADD she was clutching against her chest – if she let go, she might just be tempted to _slap_ that sneer off his pretty face and _that_ wouldn’t do anyone any favors. “ _Don’t_ ,” she hissed, refusing to back down in the slightest. “Don’t you _dare_ blame this on me. You’re the one being ridiculous and unreasonable. I mean, for Christ sake, this is _Marcus’_ baby…why the hell are you even worried about how well the _waste water_ system functions?”  

 

Khan lifted his head, glaring at her down the length of his nose, expression turning icy in its hauteur. “While _you_ may be well satisfied with a job half-done, Lieutenant, _I_ expect perfection.”

 

With that, he spun back the other way and stalked off toward the bridge, leaving her standing in the corridor, staring after him, furious and wishing very much that she could just let him go; that she could just walk away and let him make an absolute ass of himself. Unfortunately, she knew perfectly well that she couldn’t do anything of the sort. If he made a scene – especially with Sung, who Marcus actually _liked_ – it would definitely get back to Marcus.   When it got back to Marcus, _she_ would be the one catching all manner of shit for not minding her charge better.

 

“Oh, goddamn it,” she muttered, starting forward again, steadily picking up her pace as she approached the bridge, spurred on by the shouts echoing down the corridor. The main door to the currently under construction command hub stood open and Duval wasted no time charging through it, cursing to herself at the scene already well under play ahead of her.

 

The entire complement of project leads, gathered for an on-site status meeting, were standing in a semi-circle around Dr. Sung, the engineering lead. Khan, who was staring down his nose at the far shorter Sung, stood just in front of the entire group, arms crossed and chin up in his all too familiar _bow-before-me-or-perish-insect_ pose. Sung, for his part, was looking up at Khan with a bland expression, utterly unimpressed by the six feet of furious outrage looming over him.

 

“…so I _really_ don’t see what the problem is, Commander Harrison.”

 

“The problem, _Doctor_ Sung, is that the filtration system was installed incorrectly.”

 

“The system was installed precisely to Starfleet standards. I qc’d the installation myself yesterday – there is absolutely nothing wrong with it.”

 

“Installed to _Starfleet_ standards hardly equates to being installed as per _my_ standards, which were spelled out in deliberately idiot-proof language in the plans...”

 

“As I told you several months ago when you first presented them,” Sung said, voice going sharp with mounting irritation, “the changes you drew into the plans were unnecessary and cost-prohibitive.”

 

“And as _I_ then demonstrated – and enumerated in _exhaustive_ detail – the long term cost _saving_ potential of a thoroughly upgraded waste water utilization system far outstrips the initial investment of both time and resources. I should have thought that a man of your supposed experience and purported expertise would appreciate the trade off!”

 

“Cherry-picking data from the oldest active duty ships in the fleet hardly constitutes an exhaustive study, Commander, and no amount of you sticking your nose in the air and impugning my credentials is ever going to convince me otherwise!”

 

“Stop, stop, stop,” Duval said loudly, shouldering her way past one of the lower level leads and coming to stand beside the two angry men. PADD clutched in the hand that hung at her side, she lifted the other into the space between them, palm out in an attempt at a placating gesture. “Let’s all just calm down and talk about this without resorting to personal attacks, ok?”

 

“I’d be _happy_ to, Lieutenant,” Sung said, sarcasm turning the words hard, “but that’s hard to do when the Commander takes even the most constructive criticism of his work as a personal attack.”

 

“You have an extraordinarily _loose_ definition of the word ‘constructive’, _Doctor_.”

 

Sung’s lips thinned and he shot Khan a dark look. “Case…in…point.”

 

Duval checked the urge to elbow Khan in the ribs, keeping her eyes on Sung and plastering what she hoped was a conciliatory expression on her face. “You have to understand where the Commander is coming from – his ideas have revolutionized so many different aspects of the Vengeance from the propulsion system to the weapons arrays to the navigational capabilities. Can you really blame him for wanting to carry that same level of innovation throughout the rest the ship?”

 

“I can when it interferes with my ability to actually get the ship built on time and on budget.” Sung’s entire manner, as it so often was when he addressed her, was dismissive. “And with respect, Lieutenant Duval, I don’t tell you how to do your job – whatever that actually _is_ these days – stop trying to tell me how to do mine.”

 

The insult, such as it was, missed its mark, rolling straight off Duval’s back. She had been fielding cheap shots from their side of the fence for too long for it to give her even a moment’s pause. “I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, Doctor,” she said with a sigh, arching an unimpressed brow at him, “I’m simply trying to point out that the Commander is only doing _his_.”

 

“Which is something that _the Commander_ ,” Khan added icily from her other side, “can well do himself. I do not need an interpreter, _Lieutenant_.”

 

The words cracked through the room like the lash of a whip, striking Duval so hard that it _stung_. Struggling to hide her shock at the entirely unexpected jibe, she straightened her back, squared her shoulders and slowly turned her head to look at Khan. He was staring her down in very much the same way he had been Sung only moments before, his arms crossed over his chest and his god-awful mood emblazoned across his face for the world to see. She knew why he was acting like this – knew that it was his frustrations and fears talking. But that didn’t make it any easier to swallow and it certainly didn’t make it ok.

 

Looking away from Khan, knowing that it wasn’t the time or the place for that particular conversation, Duval forced a thin, brittle smile and gave a sharp nod. “Right,” she bit out, her temper flaring despite her best efforts to keep it in check. “My most sincere apologies, _gentlemen. Clearly_ I overstepped my bounds. Now if you’ll excuse me…”

 

“Do save the dramatics…”

 

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” she said loudly, talking straight over Khan, the words like ground glass in her mouth – the absolute _last_ thing she needed at that moment was to hear even one more word out of him. “I’ll just leave y’all to your business while I go and try to find something _useful_ to do with my terribly unimportant time.” And with that, she whipped around, head high and walked across the room with as much dignity as she could muster. As far as responses went, it wasn’t much, but it was all that she would allow herself, swallowing down the tidal wave of words that clawed at her tongue, begging to be loosed.

 

_Cool, calm, professional_ , she told herself, reciting the words like a mantra as she felt the weight of several dozen sets of eyes on her back. _Keep it cool, calm and professional for just a little bit longer_...

 

Then she was in the corridor and the bridge was behind her and with every step that took her further away, a little bit more of the façade crumbled, falling to the floor in a heap of dusty, desiccated good intentions. “I’m so terribly sorry,” she ground out at last as she blew down yet another corridor, ferociously pissed off and finally letting herself _feel_ it. “I’m _so_ terribly sorry for interfering in y’all’s very important work of measuring who’s got the bigger dick.” She shook her head, pulling a face of utter disgust, the hand not holding her PADD balled into a fist at her side. “Arrogant fucking _pricks_ – go on and kill each other, see if I give one single, solitary _fuck_.”

 

Sung especially could go straight to hell. He was worried about meeting deadlines? If it hadn’t been for _her_ , they wouldn’t be anywhere _near_ on schedule. If the little bastard was going to act like he wasn’t _well_ aware of that fact, then he could damn well fight those battles himself.

 

And Khan…

 

“Miserable son of a bitch,” she muttered, striding toward the first set of access stairs she came across, fully intent on leaving the Vengeance as far behind as she possibly could, “thinks he can just…”

 

From somewhere near her hip, a tri-tone chime sounded, a rolling crescendo that repeated twice more in quick succession. Duval, her foot hovering over the first step, stopped short, her free hand slapping down on the handrail. “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” she huffed, glancing down at the PADD in her hand.

 

That chime – custom set – could mean only one thing.

 

Taking a step back from the stairs, her back to the nearest wall, Duval lifted her PADD up, cradling it on one forearm while she tapped in her security code. As soon as the lock screen disappeared, a new message blinked up at her from the notification bar. A few quick taps of her fingers later and she was looking at a carefully encoded message from Thomas Harewood. Eyes skipping expertly over the non-essential text and characters, her eyes widened…and then widened some more…until…

 

“Fuck me,” she breathed, eyes locked on a particular data set that may as well have been highlighted and underlined, so sharply did it leap out at her from the screen, “that’s it. That’s…that’s gotta be it.”

 

A moment later, the PADD had been locked and tucked back against her side and Duval was striding back the way she had come, making her way through the labyrinth of the Vengeance’s seemingly never-ending interior. Buzzing now on a combination of lingering anger and pure adrenaline, she rounded corner after corner until finally she was right back where she had been not fifteen minutes prior. Without giving herself a chance to think about it, she blew through the door and onto the bridge, ignoring everything and everyone who wasn’t Khan.

 

He was standing on the far side of the room, his back to her as he barked out a furious comment about incompetence that she mostly ignored – he and Sung were _still_ at it; how very productive of them. She stopped just behind him, rolling her eyes at the snark that continued to flow both ways. “Commander,” she snapped, eyes on the back of his head. “I need to speak with you.”

 

Nothing.

 

Duval’s eyes narrowed – the man could hear a whisper in a wind tunnel; there was no _way_ he hadn’t heard her, no matter how many different people were talking at him. He really could be a petulant shit when he wanted to…

 

She grit her teeth, free hand clenching hard into a fist at her side as she attempted to rally what little patience she had left. Several of the engineers stopped, looking past Khan and watching her with expressions varying from amused to wary. Clearly, some of them were better acquainted with the truth of her than others. “Commander Harrison.”

 

The words were sharper that time, louder. But it made no difference. No difference at all.

 

Khan kept talking, not a stutter or hesitation in sight as he continued to ignore her entirely.

 

Lips thinning into a grimace, Duval resisted the almost uncontrollable urge to lob her PADD at the back of his stubborn, arrogant head. He knew – _knew_ – that nothing pissed her off quicker and more thoroughly than being ignored. That he was doing it _now_ of all times…

 

_Bigger person_ , she reminded herself. _Be the bigger person. You know why he’s acting like this so just…be the bigger person…_

 

“I just received the report you’ve been waiting for, Commander,” she announced, gratified to hear his words cut off mid-sentence. “I hate to disturb you, _sir_ , but I was under the impression that you wished to be informed as soon as it arrived.”

 

He spun around, eyes landing on the PADD in her hand before jumping up to hers, his expression blank and empty and cold – everything that she damn well knew he wasn’t. “And?”

 

Really? He was going to ask her questions _here_?

 

“Well, I’ve only just barely skimmed it at this point, Commander,” she said, frowning up at him, “but I’d say it shows… _definite_ promise. I think it might just be exactly what you were looking for.”

 

He didn’t move, didn’t speak – but his _eyes_ …

 

Hope, desperate and painful and hesitant, exploded in his eyes; a supernova of emotion that she alone knew him well enough to see. “I am glad to hear it,” he said, a calm to his words that she knew he absolutely did not feel. “Though I believe I would like to see it for myself.” He turned, offering a nod so slight it could barely be called polite to the pack of engineers behind him. “Gentlemen, if you will excuse me.”

 

“Really?” Sung’s tone was hard, laced with irritation. “All of that and you’re just going to walk away _now_?”

 

“We were getting nowhere,” Khan remarked sharply, “and I now have other, more pressing matters to attend to.” He pinned the other man with a look. “Though you may trust that I will revisit this issue very soon – your arguments aside, it was a job half-done and that I will not abide.”

 

He turned back to her then, gesturing toward the door. “Shall we, Lieutenant?”

 

Duval bobbed her head and turned, starting back the way she had come yet again only this time with Khan hard on her heels.

 

“I’m not going to change my stance on this, Commander,” Sung called after them. “I’m not willing to sacrifice progress for the sake of your pride. I’ll go to Admiral Marcus if I have to, Harrison.”

 

Khan stopped just at the door, glancing over his shoulder. “And I am not willing to sacrifice quality and innovation for the sake of yours.” He smiled and it was a thin, dangerous thing to behold. “As this ship is, at the Admiral’s behest, intended to be better than any previously built, which argument do you think will resonate with him more?”

 

A pause.

 

Duval bit her lip, trying to keep from smiling – everyone knew the answer to that. Marcus, as Khan had said, expected nothing less than perfection on the Vengeance. Sung, cheeks turning a truly satisfying shade of red, opened his mouth to respond but then shut it again with a snap.

 

“Yes. As I thought.” Khan turned back to her, motioning for her to precede him. “Good day to you, _gentlemen,”_ he offered drily, just as the door hissed shut behind them.

Duval, still far more annoyed than amused, shook her head as she walked ahead of him down the corridor. “Well…that should make for some pleasant meetings in the future. Good work, _sir_.”

 

“Stop calling me that,” Khan snapped, stepping up beside her, unconsciously matching his naturally longer stride to hers. “You know perfectly well that none of that was about _you_.”

 

“Except for the part that _was_.”

 

A sigh, thick with impatience. “We have far more important things to concern ourselves with. Must we do this?”

 

They rounded a corner, Duval sidestepping a worker half-hidden beneath an open access panel in the floor. “Considering this is hardly the place to discuss those important things, I really think we must.”

 

“If I simply apologize now, can we have done with it?”

 

“Well, I don’t know,” she drawled, rounding another corner. “If you apologize now, are you actually going to _mean_ it?”

 

“If it will bring an end to this tedious business, I assure you, I shall.”

 

Duval scoffed, shaking her head. “You know what? Just forget the whole damn thing. It doesn’t even matter.”

 

“Then we are in full agreement. Excellent.”

 

Her jaw clenched, anger stabbing at her. Life had been so much easier before, when the only person whose opinion truly mattered had been her own. Now, his callousness stung and she couldn’t help but resent the power he had over her.

 

Quickening her pace, she fairly flew down the remaining corridors and then down the steps that carried her to the floor of the construction hangar. Not bothering to look and see if Khan was still with her – she didn’t have to; she could _feel_ his presence behind her – she wove in and out of the chaos around them and hurried into the corridor that offered the most direct route to their quarters.

 

Not another word was spoken for the duration of the trip, each of them keeping their mouths firmly and determinedly shut. Duval, whose brain was engaged in a massive circular argument – _you know he’s on edge **I’m on edge too** you know why he’s acting this way **it doesn’t excuse it** you’d be no different in his shoes **that still doesn’t excuse it** you shouldn’t be acting this way **he shouldn’t be taking it out on me**_ – charged into their quarters at full speed, not stopping until she reached the lounge where she finally turned, thrusting her PADD out toward Khan who was still right at her back.

 

“Here,” she said, passing it into his hands without looking at him, “you know the code. Harewood’s report should still be open and ready for you to read.”

 

“Where are you going?”

 

His voice was sharp – and goddamn him if she couldn’t hear a smattering of resentment in there as well. Where the hell did he get off acting like _she’d_ done anything for _him_ to resent? “To change my clothes,” she snapped, “is that ok?”

 

“Why?”

 

Her head snapped up, glaring at him. “Since when do I have to explain myself to _you_?”

 

Khan was glaring right back at her, the PADD cradled between his palms. “Oh, do stop acting like a _child_ , Rebecca.”

 

“Gladly,” she fired back, “just as soon as _you_ stop acting like a complete prick.”

 

Face morphing into a look of utter disgust, Khan turned away from her, stalking across the room to the couch. “I have not the time nor the inclination to argue with you,” he sneered, perching on the edge of the seat and tapping angrily at the screen of her PADD, “nor to humor your notoriously delicate sensibilities – there are far more important things to be dealt with at present, Rebecca.”

 

“Yeah, well...if it weren’t for me and my delicate sensibilities, _you_ would still be looking for those far more important things.” She spun around, heading for her room, head high. “You’re welcome, by the way, _Your Majesty_.”

 

“ _You_ found nothing,” Khan sneered from behind her. “If I owe thanks to anyone it is Thomas Harewood – not _you_.”

 

Duval stopped just short of the door to her room, sucking in a few deep breaths as she tried very hard to keep her composure. “Right,” she hissed when she felt reasonably in control. “I didn’t do anything…except for the part where I’m the one that started him looking in the first place.”

 

“Yes, by dangling the life of his dying daughter over his head – how very _proud_ you must be.”

 

Temper flaring fire-bright, Duval whipped around and _glared_. _Bigger person_ , she chanted in her head, though even her inner voice of reason was seething at _that_ comment. “You know,” she ground out, “you’re gonna feel like a real ass once we’ve found them and you realize just how big of a _prick_ you’ve been to me.”

 

“Perhaps you might want to save your gloating,” Khan warned glancing up at her, expression supremely disinterested, “until we have _actually_ found them.”

 

Duval, who had started for her door again, stopped in the doorway, turning around to look at him yet again, goaded anew by the infuriating blandness of his tone. “I’m not gloating,” she snapped. “I’m just pointing out that you might consider showing a little gratitude – or if that’s too much, maybe you could try _not_ acting like a miserable jackass. It would be a nice change after the last week.”  


Khan arched a brow. “If you are fishing for an apology for my mood of late, Rebecca, I am afraid you will be disappointed.” He dropped his eyes back to the PADD, dismissive all over again. “We are both fully aware of the cause; I refuse to apologize because you foolishly expected to be the cure.”

 

Gritting her teeth against an utterly childish and ultimately useless urge to shout all manner of obscenities at him, Duval simply turned her back on him. “I don’t expect to be your cure for anything,” she hissed, stepping the rest of the way into her room. “But I’d really rather not be your scapegoat either.”

 

“Perhaps,” he mused, tone as haughty and condescending as she had ever heard it – which was _really_ saying something, “if you had even _once_ let me be as I repeatedly _asked_ you to do, I would not have felt the need to lash out.”

 

Back still to him, her hand shot out and grabbed the doorframe, tripping the sensor that would prevent the door from closing. “Perhaps if _you_ learned the difference between _asking_ and _ordering_ I might have been more inclined to listen to you.”

 

Khan sighed, sounding quite thoroughly put upon. “This grows ever more tiresome. Is it absolutely necessary that we do this _now_ , Rebecca?”

 

“No,” she said shortly, releasing the doorframe and taking another step into her room, “I guess it’s not.”

 

The door hissed shut between them and Duval, wanting very much to punch something – quite possibly _him_ – stood there glaring at it heatedly. “Prick,” she muttered before spinning around and stomping over to her wardrobe, peeling off her long-sleeved uniform shirt as she went – despite what he clearly thought, she wasn’t trying to be dramatic; she legitimately wanted to change her clothes.

 

A bead of sweat rolled down her back, just along her spine and she grimaced. The temperature on the station might well be regulated on the cooler side, but between her nerves and her anger, Duval felt like she’d been shoved inside a sauna. Ripping open the wardrobe doors, she leaned in, rifling around as she searched for cooler, more comfortable clothes.

 

_What a dick_ , her brain whispered at her as she pulled out a tank top and then yanked it over her head. Her fingers dropped to her pants, working at the fastenings. _What a complete fucking ass…_

If he thought she was going to just roll over and take his bullshit, he really had another think coming. She wasn’t about to just sit back and let him weasel his way out of the genuine apology that she absolutely deserved – not when he had been acting like such a shit. He was lucky that it didn’t…

 

That it didn’t…

 

_Oh_ …

 

Duval stopped, her comfy pants only half on as a sudden and thoroughly surprising realization cycled on repeat through her brain. _It doesn’t hurt._ He had been at his sullen, miserable worst; had lobbed each word – each stinging barb – with extraordinarily well-aimed precision. But…while he had certainly stoked her anger, nothing he’d said had actually _hurt._

Hauling her pants the rest of the way up, Duval crossed over to her dresser, pulling the tie from her hair. Fingers combing through her freed tresses and scratching at her scalp, she leaned in close to the mirror, observing her face critically.

 

Why? Why didn’t it hurt?

 

_Because it’s just like he said_ , the wisest, most mature version of herself drawled from within. _He didn’t mean a word of it and you **know** it._

 

She frowned at her reflection, shaking her head at herself. “He may not have meant it,” she said firmly, grasping at the swiftly banked embers of what had been a flaming temper, “but he still said it.”

 

_Because you’ve never said anything you didn’t actually mean when you were stressed out and pissed off before, right? Come on, now, girl…you know how rough it is for **you** right now; imagine how much worse it is for **him**.     _

Blowing out a breath, she stared into her eyes, deflating in the face of such well-wielded logic. “Well…hell…”

 

As much as she hated to admit it, it really was true. She had a whole mountain of concerns about this whole situation; concerns that ate at her and needled her every day and night. But the fact was, Khan had every single one of those same concerns. They were both risking _everything_ for this…

 

Except, his _everything_ also included seventy-two people that he loved with astounding ferocity. Seventy-two people that he counted himself wholly responsible for; whose lives and well-being he carried firmly on his shoulders. To her, they were still little more than an idea, though she had been learning as much about them as she could over the past weeks. But to Khan…

 

To Khan, they were his family.

 

_And do remember, Rebecca Jeanne Duval, how irrationally **you** behaved not two months ago when the stress was really getting to you? You lost your damn mind and started screaming at him in front of half the Vengeance construction crew. I don’t recall **him** shoving that behavior down your throat._

“Oh, son of a bitch,” Duval sighed, dropping her head and rubbing at her eyes – it was such a _bitch_ , this whole being _fair_ thing. Looking back up, she met her own eyes once more, nodding decisively to herself. “Time to let it go, Lieutenant – like the man said, there’s more important things right now.”

 

So, with one final deep inhale and exhale, Duval reached up and gathered her hair into her hand, twisting it up into a messy bun at the back of her head and tying it off once more. Then, she turned and headed back to the door, a new determination in her step.

 

Khan didn’t look up as she entered the room, his eyes firmly on the PADD in his hands. Without a word, Duval walked straight over to him, bare toes touching his boots as she stopped directly in front of him. “Hey,” she said sharply, “look at me.”

 

He didn’t.

 

“I am _busy_ , Rebecca.”

 

“I know you are. And I promise we’ll dive headfirst into all this in just a second. But right now,” she reached out, cupped his chin in her hand and urged his face up to hers – mildly surprised when he let her, “I need you to look at me.”

 

Blue eyes – so beautiful they made her blood _sing_ – stared straight up into hers, shuttered and locked up tight. “What?”

 

She slid her hand up, fingers dancing a caress across his skin before palming his cheek. Bending at the waist, she leaned down to bestow a sweet kiss upon his mouth, lamenting the tension she could feel in the pressed line of his lips. Closing her eyes, she tipped her head forward, resting her forehead against his. “I don’t want to fight,” she said softly, bumping his nose with her own. “I won’t apologize, but I won’t ask you to either. All I’ll ask is that you remember that I’m on _your_ side here. I know you’re not exactly overflowing with options here, but please stop taking everything out on me.”

 

She felt Khan sigh, felt the warm rush of his breath as he exhaled shakily. One big, long-fingered hand lifted to her hip, settling there and squeezing lightly. “I did not…” he stopped, his fingers gripping even tighter. “I never want to hurt you, Rebecca.”

 

“And you didn’t,” she assured him, pulling back so that she could meet his eyes – he was looking up at her with such visible regret that it eased all the little bits of her that were still less than pleased with him, “though not for lack of trying.”

 

He pulled her forward, steadying her with his hand as he pressed his forehead against her belly. “I know,” he said lowly and the regret was in his voice now too. “I know...and I _am_ sorry for it. This…I am unaccustomed to…”

 

“We both are,” Duval finished for him, bringing her hands to the back of his head, threading her fingers through his hair, enjoying the slide of it across her skin. “And this is a hell of a situation to try and figure things out in.” She tightened her grip on his hair, tugging his head backwards so that he would look at her. “But I think we’re doing a pretty damn good job of it, all things considered.”

 

He smiled then, thin and a little sad, but a smile nonetheless – not quite what she would have liked it to be, but far better than the scowl that had been permanently etched on his face over the past week. “All things considered, Rebecca,” he said, eyes sliding shut as she rubbed at his scalp, “I believe we are doing far better than _pretty good_.”

 

“Yeah well, err on the side of caution…that’s me.”

 

Khan laughed, a hitching bark of unexpected laughter and his eyes opened, a spark of too long absent mirth burning in their depths. “When has that _ever_ been you?”

 

“Excuse you,” she said playfully, dropping her hands to his shoulders and giving him a shove, “I’m _always_ cautious.”

 

“I do not believe you even know what the word _means_ , Rebecca.”

 

She grinned, stepping sideways and turning to drop down onto the couch beside him. “Oh, I know what it means. But I’ll admit, does tend to be more of a situational thing.”

 

Khan gave a low hum and then reached out to lift one of her hands from her lap, fingers encircling her wrist as he drew it towards him. “That,” he said, turning her hand over so that the inside of her wrist faced up, his thumb tracing the delicate blue veins that shown through her skin, “I can well believe.” He lowered his head, kissing the ridge of scar tissue that ran across the heel of her hand – the most livid reminder of the mission that had changed _so_ much between them.

 

A slow building warmth – thick and sweet – welled up from within her, centered in her chest and spread outward. There was a name for it, she knew. But the word was big and terrifying and something inside of her still shied away from it, so instead of acknowledging it, Duval leaned sideways and laid her cheek against his shoulder, her forehead resting against the line of his jaw.

 

For several long moments, they stayed that way, Khan pressing back against her and the silence between them filling up with all the things they didn’t say. There was a comfort to it, an abiding joy and a bolstering security like she had never imagined she could feel and Duval sank into it, reveled in it. She could quite happily have stayed that way, tucked up in him, forever.

 

But the PADD that lay abandoned in his lap glowed up at her, the bright, electronic glare demanding their attention and reminding her that there were other things that _had_ to come first. Some day – _eventually_ – a time would come that would be just for them.

 

That time was not now.

 

So she slowly, regretfully, drew back from him, looking up into his face and offering him a smile. “Are we good now?”

 

His answering smile was as full of regret as her was, softening the loss of all that wonderful _everything_ and he bent his head to steal a kiss. “Always, Rebecca.”

 

Smiling even wider, Duval shifted, reaching out to snag her _other_ PADD – her untraceable and utterly forbidden ghost PADD – from where it sat on the coffee table. Gathering it into her lap, she shifted back onto the couch beside him, drawing her legs up and crossing them beneath her. “Then let’s see what we can do about verifying Harewood’s latest report, shall we?”

 

“Indeed, let’s,” Khan answered, shifting further back onto the couch himself and lifting her officially recognized PADD from his lap.

 

Just that quickly, the switch was flipped and both of them slid effortlessly into business-mode, the air between them crackling now with an entirely different energy. Duval leaned over him to point at the screen.

 

“This first location he has listed – I know for a fact it’s not that one.”

 

“Indeed?”

 

She nodded emphatically. “I’ve been to that facility. It’s smack dab in the middle of Nairobi and it’s small – a medical research lab roughly three times the size of ours here on Io. There’s no way they would have the room to store seventy-two cryotubes of the dimensions you’ve described. Besides that, I know the lead on the project operating out of there and while they call it _medical_ research, it’s actually a developmental site for biological weapons. It’s one of Marcus’ pet projects that no one – including myself – is supposed to know about. I highly doubt he would risk disrupting the work they’re doing there.”

 

Khan frowned thoughtfully. “That sounds a logical enough argument against it as a possibility. On the other hand, the fact that it _is_ such an illogical choice could well make it an ideal location. You know how Marcus’ mind works far better than I do, however, so I am well prepared to take your word for it.”

 

“We can always surveil it later if the other site doesn’t pan out.”

 

His frown deepened. “I should prefer _not_ to intrude into multiple systems unless absolutely necessary. The more we dig…”

 

“…the more likely we are to trip an electronic alarm,” she finished for him, glancing up. “I want to mitigate risk as much as you do, but I happen to have the project lead’s clearance codes up my sleeve, so it would be about as minimally invasive as it gets. But I really don’t think we’re going to need to use it.” She looked back down at the PADD, tapping her finger on the second listed site. “This is it, Khan. Everything about this site tells me that it’s _exactly_ the sort of place that Marcus would have chosen to hide your people.”

 

“Hornby Bay,” Khan deciphered, having easily grasped the cipher system she and Harewood had agreed on. “Are you familiar with that facility at all?”

 

“Vaguely,” Duval answered, leaning over to start tapping away at her ghost PADD, utilizing various back doors she had spent years cultivating in order to pull up the information they needed. “I’ve never been there, but I know it’s about as remote as it’s possible to get on Earth today.” Tilting her PADD to show him the map she had pulled up. “This part of Northern Canada is still largely uninhabited. The Hornby facility is about three miles from Great Bear Lake.” She tapped at the screen again, zooming in on the spot in question. “It’s an absolutely enormous campus – ten huge warehouses plus fourteen outbuildings. Once upon a time, it was one of the Sections main weapons development installations, but it was basically shut down when Io was completed.”

 

“That _does_ sound promising,” Khan agreed, reaching over to drag the screen back and forth, surveying the satellite image closely. “Space would certainly not be an issue.”

 

“Definitely not,” Duval agreed. “And the fact that Harewood’s research shows that there is currently a small medical staff assigned there makes me think that this _has_ to be it. Unless Marcus has started up a new program that I’m not familiar with – which is, of course, entirely possible.”

 

“But highly unlikely,” Khan added, finishing her thought. “You are quite tenaciously abreast of what goes on in all corners of the Section 31 universe.”

 

Duval smiled, shrugged. “I like to know what’s going on,” she admitted. “Information is a priceless commodity in this business.”

 

“And you are a veritable tycoon in your own right.” He looked up, an expression of such bald admiration on his face that it momentarily took her breath away. “I do not know if I have ever mentioned it before, Rebecca, but you are quite extraordinarily brilliant.”

 

Feeling an uncharacteristic and wholly annoying blush stain her cheeks – considering the source, that was by far the most incredible compliment she had ever received – Duval ducked her head, fingers flying over the PADD. “I’m good at my job,” she demurred. “And before you start dishing out the compliments, let’s take a look around the place and see if I’m right.”

 

“If it _is_ the correct site, I would assume that the typical electronic systems would have been reinforced with extra layers of security protocols.”

 

Duval huffed out a laugh, brow cocking in amusement. “I’d say that’s a safe bet. And if there wasn’t at first, there will be now. With you playing hell with so many of the systems, Marcus would have been an idiot not to absolutely _swamp_ the place with additional security.”

 

“As if that would have stopped me,” Khan sniffed.

 

She tossed him a quelling look. “You’re not quite as good as you like to think you are,” she remarked seriously. “I took a peek at the breach cache – you have all the subtlety of a very large bull in a very small china shop, Khan.”

 

The change in his expression then was almost comical – his eyes widened and his mouth dropped open and he looked so dramatically insulted that Duval very nearly laughed out loud. “I do believe I mentioned the fact that the vast majority of my prying was done with deliberate clumsiness. I _wanted_ to appear inept, Rebecca.”

 

“I’m not talking about the obvious hacks,” she shot back. “An Ensign straight out of the Academy without a lick of Section security knowledge could have spotted _those_. I’m talking about your _real_ attempts. I could see how they were good enough to fool most of the idiots Marcus has on electronic watch, but your actually damn lucky that none of the ones who are worth a damn caught you out.” She paused, looked up at him with a slightly apologetic expression. “Though I will say this – even I couldn’t figure out how you managed to re-order the surveillance systems in our quarters here. _That_ was some impressive work.”

 

Khan let out a grumble, crossing his arms over his chest and throwing himself back against the couch cushions, looking mightily put out. “Thank you ever so much for such a half-hearted and utterly backhanded compliment, Lieutenant Duval.”

 

“It’s not half-hearted – I really am impressed by that bit.”

 

“That makes me feel _infinitely_ better.”

 

Duval bit back on her smile, not wanting to antagonize him further. “There’s no shame in not being the absolute best at everything, Khan. You’re so far above the rest of us at everything else, it’s nice to have found _something_ that I can do better than you.”

 

“Yes, well, do remember that you have the advantage of having been much longer acquainted with the system than I. Given more time to familiarize myself with it, I would certainly have been capable of infiltrating with equal adroitness.”

 

Narrowing her eyes as she delved into the deepest levels of the security blanket tucked snugly around the Hornby Bay facility, Duval couldn’t keep her lips from quirking up at the corners – not that she would ever tell him, but he was never more adorable than when he was caught in the throes of frustrated petulance. “Now I know I’ve upset you – you sound like you swallowed a thesaurus.” She straightened, tension and adrenaline both spiking as she reached the all-important base layer of security. “ _There_ you are…”

 

Khan, rousing himself from his pout, sat up straight, craning his head to see the screen, blank but for a single blinking box. “I do hope you’ve purloined a sufficiently high level clearance code – I doubt just any will do for _this_.”

 

“Definitely not,” Duval agreed. “And of course I have.” She tapped in each letter and number and symbol slowly, careful not to screw up – this wasn’t the sort of thing for which she would get a second chance.

 

Watching the little box begin to fill with a random string of characters, Khan leaned in even closer, his head nearly touching hers. “Indeed?”

 

“Oh, yeah,” she assured him, tapping in the last two numbers and watching with no small amount of glee as the code was accepted and the screen filled up with several small boxes, each displaying a different security feed. “Doesn’t get much higher level than Marcus, does it?”

 

Khan’s head snapped toward hers, his eyes boring into the side of her head. “You have Marcus’ security code?”

 

She turned her head, meeting his gaze and grinning. “Like I’ve said before – he’s an arrogant old bastard. I’ve watched him input the damn thing about a million times. It’s never occurred to him that might be a bad idea.”

 

“Rebecca…”

 

“I’ve covered my tracks,” she rushed to assure, hearing the disbelief in his voice and assuming that he was questioning the wisdom of the move. “I routed the hack through his Kelvin work station.”

 

“ _Rebecca_ …”

 

“I checked his history before I did it,” she plowed on, not wanting him to imagine for a _second_ that she had been careless, “he monitors these feeds on a fairly regular basis, so this won’t set off any alarms anywhere, I prom…”

 

The word was cut off as Khan dove in toward her, sealing his lips over hers as his hands came up to grasp either side of her face. He pulled back after only a moment, his eyes on hers and once again full to brimming with that same blistering admiration. “As I said,” he breathed, his tone very nearly reverent, “you are _brilliant_.”

 

Flushing all over again, Duval pulled her face out of his hands and dropped her eyes back to the PADD, speechless and glowing with the force of his praise. She eyed the different feeds…and there…in the very center…

 

She tapped on the box, which expanded to fill the screen…and her breath caught in her throat.

 

Beside her, she heard Khan give a strangled cry and suddenly the PADD was ripped from her hands. She turned, heart tripping in her chest at the sight of him, nose nearly pressed to the screen that was held between hands that shook.

 

“ _Finally_ ,” he whispered, eyes jumping back and forth – counting, no doubt, the rows and rows of cryotubes laid out in crisp lines within Hornby Bay’s Warehouse 3.

 

When he looked up at her a moment later, her heart didn’t just trip…it tumbled. His eyes – his beautiful, heart-wrenching eyes – were red-rimmed, a faint sheen of tears glittering in the low light of their quarters. The expression on his face…she couldn’t have described it if she tried; too many emotions warred there, swirling and shifting and stripping him of every trace of the hardened stoicism that habitually lived there.

 

At that moment, he was nothing of the dictator; he was not even the Augment. At that moment, he was simply a man. A man who had found the family that he had despaired of ever laying eyes on again.

 

At that moment, he was the most beautiful thing she had _ever_ seen.

 

“We have found them,” he whispered and his voice _broke_. “Rebecca…we have _found_ them.”

 

Feeling the bite of tears in her own eyes, she gave him a watery smile, her lips trembling with the effort not to cry. “We found them,” she echoed, her voice shaking nearly as badly as his.

 

His eyes shifted back to the screen and a single tear slipped from the corner of his eye, sliding over the sharp line of his cheekbone and then down into the hollow beneath. “We found you,” he whispered to the sleeping men and women on the other side of the solar system. “We are coming for you.”

 

The ‘we’ hit her square in the heart, making her blood sing. That he counted them a pair in general was enough to thrill her; that he did it to _them_ , even though they could not hear, was something else entirely. It spoke of a dedication that she had never dared hope for – a permanence that she had never allowed herself to acknowledge that she wanted.

 

Because she _did_ want it. She knew that then with a certainty that went bone deep.

 

This man – this arrogant, brilliant, ruthless, wonderful man…

 

She never wanted to be anywhere that he wasn’t. Never wanted to stand anywhere but at his side.

 

She _loved_ this man.

 

It was a blinding realization; a stunning, earth-shaking, soul-shattering realization that left her feeling hollowed out and filled up all at once. Rebecca Duval, who had spent her entire life trying her _damndest_ not to care too much about anyone or anything, _loved_ this man sitting beside her with every atom of her existence…with every beat of her heart and every breath that she took.

 

And she knew, like she had never known anything before, that there was _nothing_ she wouldn’t do to see him happy. Nothing she wouldn’t do to get him the thing he wanted most.

 

If she had to fight…

 

If she had to _kill_ …

 

If she had to raze Section 31 to the ground with her bare hands…

 

He _would_ have his people back. And she would be at his side when it happened.


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: First and foremost…my sincerest apologies for the extended delay. Between the Holidays and a pesky flare up of writer’s block, this chapter felt it was never going to get written. But I’m back on track now, the chapter is done and the calendar is looking promising!
> 
> And to the anon on tumblr who I told I would definitely be updating before the New Year…boy did I speak too soon! I was so very wrong, and I’m so very sorry! :(
> 
> Speaking of tumblr, stop on by and say hi, why don’t ya? I’d love to hear from you! (I’m @alethnya over there…original, I know!)
> 
> As always, thank you to all of my amazing readers. And thank you so, so much to my beta, Xaraphis – sis, you were my rock for this one! Enjoy!

_(six weeks later)_

 

“Duval to see Commander Vazquez…” she announced as she walked through the door and into the ante-room of Vazquez’s office, “ _as ordered_.”

 

The last two words were sharp, staccato – fired off like warning shots as she stalked across the room to the door that led to the Facility Commander’s office-proper. When the door in question did _not_ simply open obligingly before her, she stopped with a jerk and then swung her head around to glare at the figure lounging behind the large, glass and steel desk that had once belonged to another less than pleasant desk jockey. “I’m sorry,” she snapped, arching a brow at the dark eyes staring back at her, “was that not clear enough for you?”

 

“Forgive me, Agent Duval,” Vazquez’s assistant said, respectful, as always. “But I’m afraid I must check with the Commander before I allow you to enter.”

 

“It was literally only ten minutes ago that he asked me to come in,” she said, aiming for reasonable as she grasped at the frayed shreds of her temper – she actually _liked_ Ensign Bahram Majidi and his soft-spoken competence; it was such a dramatic change from the Section norm. “I doubt he would have changed his mind between then and now.”

 

“You are correct, of course,” Majidi said with a polite tip of his head in her direction, his hand hovering over the control panel on his desk. “However, if you would be so kind as to wait just a few moments, I must confirm that with the Commander, Agent Duval.”

 

It was irritating and it wasted time, but she did, despite her surliness, understand. “Of course,” she said, faking a smile even as she shifted her shoulders, uncomfortable where her black tank was sticking to the skin between her shoulder blades. “You’ve got a job to do too, after all.”

 

The appreciative smile that earned her – _honestly_ appreciative too; another departure from Section standard these days – was just enough to soothe the prickliest parts of her temper. Which, considering everything, was a rare treat these days.

 

Reaching up to peel a strand of sweat-damp hair from where it had fallen against her cheek, she twisted it up around the sloppy ponytail that brushed the nape of her neck. A gust of cool air swept over her from above and she shivered, feeling goosebumps break out across her skin – still heated from the combination of interrupted work out and subsequent anger. Wishing she had thought to bring her gym bag with her, she crossed her arms over her chest, preserving body heat where she could.

 

She had already been in a foul mood when Vazquez _summoned_ her – a _very_ foul mood; her trip to the gym allowing her to exorcise her frustrations the best way she knew how. Frustrations that had been steadily compounding over the weeks since they had discovered the location of Khan’s people. Frustrations that stemmed from the one lingering question that had yet to be answered…

 

They already had a plan, of course. Or at least, the vast majority of a plan.

 

Simple in its complexities, painstaking in its detail – they had spent the past six weeks pouring over every possibility; addressing every potential contingency that they could think of between them. They knew where they had to go, they knew how they were going to get there and they knew what they needed to do once they _did_ get there.

 

They just needed to figure out _when_ to actually do it.

The timing, as with everything else, needed to be precise and carefully considered. Not only did they need to have full confidence that prying eyes were looking decidedly elsewhere, they needed to be looking elsewhere long enough to actually _achieve_ the goals they had in mind. It also needed to be sooner rather than later – a fact that both she and Khan had agreed on wholeheartedly, both of them growing increasingly tired of the pretense they were forced to live under; stifled by the parts they were being forced to play. Khan especially had been chafing more and more beneath Marcus’ yoke, his patience worn threadbare after nearly a year spent in servitude.

 

And every day that went by with that one remaining question hanging over their heads, Khan’s restlessness grew. Some days, that growth felt positively exponential.

 

This morning had been one of _those_ days.

 

Thus, the work out, for all the good it had done...

 

Behind her, she could hear Majidi talking…could hear Vazquez answering…and then the door was sliding open and she could see Vazquez sitting behind his desk, eyes lowered to whatever he was currently working on. Feeling every shred of her earlier pique come roaring back to life at the sight of the man responsible _for_ it – ordering her to his office, like she was some truant _child_ , the prick – she dropped her arms back to her side and plowed into the room.

 

“You wanted to see me,” she snapped, dropping herself uninvited into the chair in front of his desk and re-crossing her arms over her chest, looking every bit as cross as she felt.

 

Without looking up, Vazquez reached over and activated the door, which slid shut with a whispered hum. As soon as it was closed, the hand that hovered over the controls moved sideways, landing palm-down on a sheet of paper. Spinning his hand and the paper counter-clockwise, he slid them both in her direction, leaving the paper on her side of the desk before withdrawing his hand. “Explain that to me,” he said, still without having looked up at her even once.

 

Eyes narrowing in consideration – he might not be looking at her, but Duval had no doubt that she held the Commander’s undivided attention – she reached out and collected the slip of paper, flicking it straight before she lowered her eyes to it perfunctorily. It was an oddity in and of itself; hard copy these days was almost exclusively reserved for more clandestine uses, not for…

 

Brow arching as she read the block print at the top of the sheet, she looked back at Vazquez questioningly. “You need me to explain a Section-standard requisition form to you?”

 

“Not the time to be a smart ass, Duval,” the Commander warned, sounding more like Marcus than she liked – though lacking the edge of _threat_ that always accompanied the Admiral’s admonitions. Finally, Vazquez glanced up at her, his expression bland as he nodded once toward the paper in question. “Read the whole thing. Then…explain it to me.”

 

He dropped his eyes back to his work again and Duval, feeling distinctly behind the game and not at all happy about it, sucked at the inside of her lip, studying his lowered head intently. There was something different about him; something… _off_. This was a man she had been able to read at will since the day she had met him, _so_ many years ago now. But suddenly, looking at him at that moment…he was a blank page to her…

 

And _that_ , she really didn’t like.

 

Not now. Not when there was so _much_ at stake.

 

“You’re thinking about this entirely too much,” he said, fingers flicking from one page to another on the document he was reading, far too casual in both tone and movement for it to be genuine.

 

“Am I?” Duval shifted slightly in her seat, ignoring the chill bite of her still-drying shirt as she leaned back against the chair, one leg crossing negligently over the other – deliberately mirroring his assumed nonchalance. Catching the very edge of the side-eyed glance he shot her way, she smiled prettily at him. “Sorry. Old habits, you know.”

 

Vazquez sighed. Deeply.

 

“You make everything so much more difficult than it needs to be,” he muttered, shaking his head. He shoved his PADD away and then leaned back in his own chair, eyes meeting hers squarely, all attempts at pretense shoved roughly aside. “Would you _please_ just read the damn form, Rebecca?”

 

Not at all convinced but willing to at least play along – what choice did she have, really? – Duval dropped her eyes to the paper in her hand, skimming the contents…and only just managing to stave off the frown that desperately wanted to fold itself across her brow.

 

_What…the absolute…fuck…?_

_300 grams of Cesium, 500 grams of Ultritium, 100 milligrams of trilithium resin…_

The list went on from there, but Duval didn’t even bother reading past the first three items – no point, when she already knew what the fuss was about. This requisition form was filled from start to finish with enough bomb-making material to raise every red flag in a million light year radius. Better yet, there was _her_ signature looped across the bottom.

 

_Her_ signature…on a form that she had never laid eyes on before walking into this office.

 

Fucking. _Lovely_.

 

_Khan_ , she thought _to_ herself and _at_ her absent partner, _you best **pray** you have a fucking **amazing** explanation for this…_

Flipping the switch from simple Agent to active Operative wasn’t difficult; in fact, it was damn near instantaneous. Feeling all the tension drain from her neck and shoulders, Duval cocked her head up at Vazquez, setting the sheet of paper back down on the desk in front of her. “What part of this requires explanation, Commander? I should have thought my requests were straightforward enough.”

 

Vazquez, visibly unimpressed, arched a brow. “Oh, they absolutely were, Lieutenant. Completely… _straightforward_. But considering the items being requested, you had to have expected this requisition to raise at least a few questions.”

 

Duval shrugged, resting her elbows on the arm of the chair. She smiled, shrugging one shoulder carelessly. “Of course I did,” she lied with ease. “I’m not stupid – but considering everything _else_ I’ve requisitioned over the past year, I figured this wasn’t _too_ far of a stretch.”

 

Vazquez leaned forward in his seat, hands folding over one another where they rested on his desk. “So this is just like every other supply request you’ve put through then? It’s all for the sake of... _Commander Harrison’s_ work for the Admiral?”

 

Oh, but there was more going on here than met the eye. The way he’d said Khan’s assumed name…the suspicions dancing in his dark eyes…

 

Could it be possible that Commander Rafael Vazquez had _finally_ learned how to play the game?

 

Refusing to be put on her back foot, Duval lifted her chin slowly, pinning Vazquez with a dangerous look. “It’s always for the Admiral,” she said quietly, the words part answer, part counsel; he was stepping into dangerous waters here – deep and murky and nothing like anything he had ever braved before – and she wasn’t sure he had any idea of just how deadly this particular tide would be. “Everything wedo…everything _you_ do…it’s always for Marcus, Commander.”

 

Not looking away, Vazquez gave a nod. “I guess it all is, in the end,” he said, equally as quiet, equally as meaningful, “one way or another.”

 

For a long moment, they simply stared at one another, the air between them thick – vibrating with the sort of knowing tension that she would never, _ever_ have expected to face from _Vazquez_ , of all people. Gone was the blithe obliviousness that had irritated her so thoroughly; the man staring across the desk at her now was _present_ and _aware_ in a way that he had never, ever been before. This was a Vazquez who knew that there was, in fact, a world beyond his office door; a world that wasn’t nearly as tidy as he had so naively believed for so long.

 

A world that would cut you off at the knees if you didn’t learn to fight back.

 

And it very much looked to her like Rafael Vazquez had finally learned how to do just that.

 

Frankly, it was a good change – she could only imagine how effective he would have been if he’d discovered this new-found seriousness years ago.

 

Of course, the fact that it had suddenly decided to show itself now…well, to say that she was suspicious of his timing would have been an understatement…

 

Finally, with a blink and a quick grin, that new Vazquez disappeared and he dropped his head, drawing his PADD back toward him, the entire atmosphere between them swept clear of every ounce of earlier tension.

 

“But be that as it may,” the Commander continued, even his voice sounding different now, easier, “I can’t approve this request, Lieutenant. I’m afraid we just don’t have the manpower at present to accommodate the Section safety protocols that go along with use and handling of the more volatile compounds you’ve requested.”

 

Frowning, Duval found herself in the position of feeling slightly off-balance – not entirely uncommon, in general, but utterly unheard of where Vazquez was concerned. “That’s…I’m…disappointed to hear that?”

 

Vazquez cocked a brow; amused…at _her_. “Are you? Or were you asking if you should be?”

 

Nothing about this meeting was going as anticipated. Absolutely _nothing_.

 

_Jesus Christ Almighty_ , she sneered inwardly, _I sound like a complete idiot. Get it together, girl…_

She cleared her throat and leaned back, lounging as carelessly as she could without looking contrived. “What I meant to say was that, while I understand that those safety protocols are in place for a reason, I see no reason why an exception couldn’t be made in this situation. Commander Harrison is as diligent as they come, sir – he would strictly adhere to any and all necessary safety procedures, I assure you.”

 

Watching him more closely and carefully than she ever had before, Duval saw straight through the considering expression he assumed at that and thus was entirely unsurprised when he began to shake his head – the regret he put on then as patently false as the considering had been.

 

“Sorry, but it’s still going to have to be a ‘no’,” Vazquez insisted, reaching across the desk to slide the requisition form back to him, his other hand opening a drawer at his side, dipping in to pull out a pen. He leaned over the paper, pen scratching away as he wrote, scribbling in the blank space beneath the supplies that _‘she’_ had ordered. “You can re-submit your request after the Vengeance has returned from the little test-flight the Admiral has planned for next month. After that’s done, I should have no problem scrounging up idle science officers to assist in whatever experiments Harrison has planned. But until then, Duval, I’m afraid everyone’s just going to be too damn busy.”

 

Going utterly still – almost holding her breath, though she was careful not to show it – Duval swallowed. _Hard_.

 

“I’m sorry…the _what_?”

 

Finishing his scrawling notation with a flourish, Vazquez closed his pen with a twist and then looked up at Duval once again, all that _knowing_ filling up his eyes though his expression remained pleasantly bland. “Hadn’t you heard, Lieutenant? Admiral Marcus plans to take the Vengeance on a three day test flight in the middle of next month – he’s calling it his birthday present.”

 

It was suspicious. Completely and utterly suspicious.

 

For Vazquez to tell her _exactly_ the thing that she most needed to know…how could she not suspect both his motives and the information itself?

 

There was no way that he knew their plan – there was no way that _anyone_ knew their plan. She hadn’t just covered their tracks, she had _buried_ them. Certainly Marcus suspected nothing; she had spoken to him only the day before and he had been as smugly confident as ever, completely convinced of her – and by extension, _his_ – control over Khan.

 

To imagine that Vazquez – _Vazquez!_ – could have seen through their machinations where so many others could not…

 

It was a ridiculous thought. An _impossible_ thought.

 

_Still though,_ she mused to herself, _much better safe than sorry._

 

Once more donning the mantle of undercover operative, Duval frowned deeply and sat forward in her seat, feigning a burgeoning annoyance that came easy after all those weeks of waiting. “And when _exactly_ was someone gonna tell me this? How the hell could plans like these have been made without _anyone_ thinking that I should know about them?”

 

“Hey now…don’t shoot the messenger,” Vazquez said, holding his hands up in front of him placatingly. “I assumed that Marcus would have told you.” A pause, a tentative tilt of his head. “Although… _considering_ …I’m not really surprised, to be honest.”

 

She crossed her arms over her chest, eyes narrowing dangerously. “Considering _what_? What aren’t you telling me?”

 

A sigh. “I really should have just kept my damn mouth shut…”

 

“Yeah, well, you didn’t,” Duval snapped, genuinely annoyed by his dithering – she didn’t have _time_ for this sort of bullshit; not if the timeline he’d just given her was legitimate, “so spit it out, Vazquez. _Why_ aren’t you surprised that Marcus hasn’t told me yet?”

 

And once again, his eyes snapped to hers, burnt umber glittering with what looked so _much_ like calculation that it threw her anew. “Because you aren’t invited. Or, more specifically, _Harrison_ isn’t invited…and I think we all know how well _that’s_ going to go over.”

 

“Are you…,” she paused, made a show of gathering herself, eyes closed and fisted hand pressed to her lips for a moment before she opened her eyes again, glaring ferociously. “Are you _kidding_ me? Do you have any idea how furious Harrison is going to be? He practically designed the entire fucking thing, top to bottom…how the hell can Marcus justify not taking him? That ship is his _baby_!”

 

“I’m well aware of that,” Vazquez drawled flatly. “ _Everyone_ is well aware of that. And that’s the problem, isn’t it? Marcus considers that ship to be _his_ baby – not Harrison’s. We’ve both seen how well they get along, so are you really surprised that Marcus has absolutely no intention of bringing him along on his birthday cruise?”

 

She was not, in fact, even the least bit surprised. What she _was_ though, was something very swiftly approaching ecstatic. Because this whole situation – the self-indulgent and self-aggrandizing ‘birthday cruise’ notion – it was just Marcus _all over_. It was so very much what he _would_ do that it made Duval feel increasingly more confident in buying what Vazquez was selling.

 

Sighing deeply, she slumped back into her chair, rubbing at her eyes with the sort of deflated weariness she knew she would have felt if this information was, in fact, the disappointment that it was meant to be. “No,” she muttered, drawing the word out as if it had been pulled from her, “I’m not surprised.” Another sigh and she pinched the bridge of her nose, eyes shut as she shook her head back and forth. “Christ, this is going to be miserable. Harrison is going to go absolutely ballistic.” She opened her eyes, pinning Vazquez with a dark look. “Please… _please_ tell me Marcus is only taking a skeleton crew. It’s going to be even harder to keep Harrison from losing his damn mind if the Admiral takes the whole fucking _station_ with him.”

 

Now it was Vazquez’s turn to sigh. “I wish I could, but you know Marcus as well as I do – he likes a good party, especially when it’s for _him_. As far as I know, he plans to take nearly the entire ship-building complement, plus all the high level Agents currently stationed here, myself included. At this point, it looks like the skeleton crew is going to be _here_ , not there.”

 

Oh…holy… _shit_ …

 

Marcus – _stunning_ in his arrogance, as always – was a complete and total idiot.

 

_Son of a bitch._

“Right,” she barked out, so eager to go find Khan and tell him the good news that she felt ready to jump clear out of her skin, “of course. Because my job isn’t hard enough as it is, right?”

 

This was the perfect time to stomp out; to play up the petulant pissiness and stalk off in a huff. Slapping her arms down on the arms of her chair, she was just about to push herself up and out when suddenly…

 

“Oh, I don’t know, Lieutenant,” Vazquez said, quieter now, heavier. “I think you like it well enough. In fact, from what I’ve seen, I’d even go so far as to say that you _love_ it.”

 

Duval froze, hearing once more the vast ocean of meaning _beneath_ the simplicity of the words. “You think so?”

 

Here, he smiled, but it was stilted – pained. “Pretty sure, yeah. We haven’t exactly been on speaking terms of late, but…” he shrugged, the movement almost helpless, “I notice. I notice _you_. And…you look…happy.”

 

Lips tightening and defenses coming up, Duval looked pointedly around the room and then back at Vazquez, flashing him a warning look. “With my work?”

 

He, however, didn’t even flinch; just kept looking right at her. “With your work,” he agreed with a small nod. “Of course.”

 

What the _hell_ was going on here? What the hell was going on with _him_?

 

Duval had no idea, but she did know one thing loud and clear.

 

For several reasons of steadily increasing importance, she needed to get the hell out of his office. Quickly.

 

Shaking her head, Duval ran her tongue over her teeth, collecting herself momentarily. “Well. Thank you…for… _that_ …but I really think I should be going.” She pushed up out of the chair, forcing a smile; hoping it didn’t look as fake as it felt. “I hate to run off so quick, but I really think I should tell Commander Harrison the news as soon as possible. I’d hate for him to hear about this from anyone else but me.”

 

“Of course,” Vazquez agreed with a nod, sliding _her_ denied requisition form back across the desk toward her. “I’m sure you want to show him this too. And remember what I said – you can re-submit that after the test flight...if you still need it by then. I’ve put a reminder note on there for you, just in case.”

 

Duval reached out and grabbed the paper off the desk, not even bothering to look at it before she folded it in quarters and shoved it into her front pocket. “Thank you.” A pause, and then, only slightly grudgingly, “sir.”

 

“Mmm,” Vazquez hummed, leaning back in his chair, arms folded across his chest and that stilted, oddly pained look on his face. “You’re welcome, Lieutenant.”

 

She didn’t have the time, the patience or the interest to ponder the intricacies of that expression, so with the most perfunctory of salutes, she turned away and headed for the door, leaving him and his strange behavior firmly at her back.

 

“You’re _always_ welcome.”

 

The words were soft; barely audible – but she _had_ heard them, nevertheless. Pausing just at the threshold of the now open door, she looked back toward the Facility Commander over her shoulder, his expression tempered now with undeniable resignation. She couldn’t pretend that she didn’t know where that look was coming from – she had long ago been made aware of his apparent _feelings_ for her – but unfortunately for him, the only feeling he engendered in her was pity…and she doubted he wanted _any_ of that.

 

At least, she knew that _she_ wouldn’t, were she in his place. So, feeling more sorry for him than she would ever feel comfortable admitting, she said nothing. With only the slightest nod of her head – the barest acknowledgment she could manage – she turned back away again and started forward once more. She didn’t stop once she was out of the office, just kept walking toward the main door, blowing straight past Majidi without a word as she was swept along by the excitement buzzing in her veins.

 

They had it – _finally_. The last piece of the puzzle had fallen into place…and she couldn’t _wait_ to tell Khan. Setting her feet toward their cargo bay, Duval nearly skipped with delight.

 

He would be working now, she knew. He was _always_ working now.

 

Not that she blamed him.

 

The only saving grace, the only thing that had kept them – kept _him_ – from losing hold of what little remaining patience they possessed was the simple fact that they had _so much_ to occupy them while they waited for the ideal moment to reveal itself.

 

Khan, unsurprisingly, had buried himself in his work, spending countless hours tinkering, testing and perfecting the weapons that had been designed _for_ Marcus, and which would, in the end, be used _against_ him. The torpedoes, the key to their entire plan, had come first and were, finally, complete to his full satisfaction; particularly the very first batch of them, lying snug in their crates and waiting for the day when they would finally be put to use.

 

It would be an unfortunate documentation error that would find them delivered to Hornby Bay rather than their intended destination in the Luna Shipyard. They would, of course, be obliged to correct the mistake in person – after, of course, they had already infiltrated the facility and loaded the cryotubes. From there, it would be a simple matter of meeting the transport crew that arrived to retrieve the torpedoes, talking their way on-board and riding along to Luna. Once there, they would provide an updated itinerary, re-directing the torpedoes _back_ to Io. Once the ship was off on _that_ leg of the trip, they would steal it, leaving them ample time to make their escape.

 

Or, at least, they anticipated that it would be simple enough. The variables involved were more than a bit daunting, but they had enough confidence in their mutual abilities that they tried not to dwell on the sheer volume of negative possibilities.

 

She had to admit though, the entire situation was going to be made far, _far_ simpler by the more expansive timeline that now stretched before them. They had been hoping to carve out a full day’s worth of freedom to work with, loath to hope for anything more than that. But _three_ days? If they couldn’t make _three_ days work, then they weren’t going to be able to make _anything_ work.

 

On the other hand, they were also now faced with a very firm – and not terribly distant – deadline. Luckily, Khan’s single-minded focus over the past few weeks had included far more than just the torpedoes and she was fairly confident that he would have little trouble ensuring that everything else was completed before the time came.  

 

She knew that he had completed the portable trans-warp beaming devices; both of them, he had assured her, had been sufficiently tested and worked precisely as he had anticipated they would. She still had not seen them work and had no idea _how_ he had tested them, but it was no great hardship to take Khan at his word; not when she could see the certainty in his face, written in the sharp, determined lines of his jaw and the confident gleam in his eyes.

 

Of late, he had shifted his attentions to the ship that would be used to escape Io, pulling it apart and putting it back together again better than he had found it; improving it in ways that should have been impossible, but somehow weren’t beneath Khan’s ingenious touch. It would be everything that they needed it to be, he assured her – swift, silent and virtually invisible.

 

While he had _his_ work, Duval had set her own sights on more distant targets, her own particular talents best utilized elsewhere. For her, any time _not_ spent planning and plotting with Khan had been all about Marcus. To the Admiral, she had been working tirelessly to prove her renewed loyalties – to her, she had been doing anything and everything she could think of to keep the old man distracted. The more distracted he was, the easier it would be to keep him blissfully unaware of what was going on. To that end, she had concocted countless schemes over the past weeks. Some were simple, requiring little more than the right words and the right look at the right time; some were not so simple, necessitating the utilization of a far larger sampling of her extensive skill set.

 

She had, through her skill and manipulation, quite thoroughly convinced Marcus that Khan was a man shattered; broken in irreparable ways by his subjugation at the Admiral’s hand and utterly, entirely devoted to _her_ – the woman he viewed as his light…his _savior_. Knowing precisely how to play to Marcus’ arrogance and his conceit, Duval had convinced him that _she_ was the key to controlling Khan. That she could get anything she wanted out of the genetically superior but still all-too-human man.

 

It was dreck of the highest magnitude – but Marcus had bought it lock, stock and barrel. Or at least, he had very much seemed to at the time. The fact that he had not seen fit to inform her of the little outing he had planned for the Vengeance, well…it didn’t necessarily speak of his utter faith in her.

 

Then again, knowing Marcus as she did, it could very well be just exactly as simple as the picture Vazquez had painted. The Admiral, for all he enjoyed stirring the hornet’s nest when it suited him, could be an abominable procrastinator when it didn’t.

 

He would expect her to be furious. He would expect Khan to _erupt_. Cataclysmically, in all likelihood. Putting it off till the very last minute would be _very_ him.

 

Torn, but hopeful, she decided that the best thing she could do would be to discuss the situation with Khan. Between the two of them, they would figure it out; determine if they could trust Vazquez and his strangely delivered treasure trove of information.

 

Bolstered by that thought, she walked on and before she knew it, Duval was at the door to their cargo bay. Reaching out to activate it with one hand, the paper shoved in her pocket crinkled, reminding her of its presence. Pausing with her fingers outstretched, she slid her other hand into her pocket and drew it out, eyeing the now-scrunched paper, reminded all over again of just _how much_ she had to discuss with her irritatingly high-handed other half. Pulling a face, she opened the door with a sharp poke of her index finger and stalked inside, heading straight toward the pair of long, lean, black-clad legs poking out from beneath the sleek, equally black hull of a small ship.

 

It had been her trickiest sell yet, that little ship – Marcus had been adamantly against Khan having carte blanche access to _any_ sort of ship, no matter how big or small – but she had been determined. A frank reminder of exactly who they were dealing with ( _he’s stronger, faster and smarter than all of the security officers on this station put together, sir…if he’d wanted to escape, he could have done it **long** ago) _capped off with the enticement of a particularly tempting possibility ( _he thinks he can modify the cloaking technology from the torpedoes for shipboard use, sir…can you **imagine** what that would mean? An entire fleet of **legally** cloaked ships?) _and the Admiral had changed his tune quick enough. The small courier ship had been delivered to their cargo bay two days later, procured for them, the accompanying note declared, by Admiral Marcus himself, in all his unending generosity.

 

She had laughed at the unintentional irony of it all. Khan, unsurprisingly, had found little humor in it.

 

Stopping now beside the ship, she kicked at the heel of one of his boots, sharp but aiming toward playful. “You best have one _helluva_ good answer ready for me when you crawl out from under there, Khan.”

 

For a moment, there was silence, broken only by the muffled clang of metal on metal from beneath the ship. Duval was just about to deliver another pointed nudge to the sole of his foot when his voice, equally muffled, rumbled up from below. “Oddly enough, even I find it difficult to answer a question which has not yet been asked, Rebecca.”

 

In answer to _that_ , Duval crouched down, shoving her hand and the paper it held under the ship, somewhere in the vicinity of his face. A moment and several sharp pings later, the paper was snatched from her hand and she could hear the distinct sounds of him unfolding it.

 

“Ah,” came Khan’s voice from below after a moment of silence, and then the paper was back in her palm once more. “That.” Another ping, followed now by the low hum of a laser welder. “You’ll want to move your hand, Rebecca – I should hate to singe you.”

 

She pulled her hand back but stayed crouched, bracing herself against the hull of the ship with the palm of her empty hand. “Funny enough, ‘ _Ah, that_ ’ wasn’t quite the explanation I was hoping for.”

 

Silence – broken only by the continued whine of the welder.

 

Stubborn ass.

 

Duval pursed her lips against the grin that was threatening to break through. “You forged my signature.”

 

The laser welder clicked off; a large hand reached out from beneath the ship, scooping up a caliper from where it rested beside her boot. “If you are shocked and disappointed by that, then I fear we are not as well acquainted with one another as I had hoped.”

 

“Please,” she scoffed. “A little credit – I’d just like to know why the hell you went to all this trouble when all you needed to do was _ask_ me. I definitely would have asked what you were planning with all those explosives, but I would still have submitted the request for you.”

 

“Of course you would have,” Khan replied, “which was precisely why I did what I did.” His long legs bent, heels digging into the floor as he edged the hover-creeper he was laying on out from beneath the ship. Once clear, he sat up bringing his eyes level with hers. “This,” he said, reaching out and plucking the form from her grasp, “was a calculated risk – on multiple levels. One that appears to have paid ample dividends all round.”

 

Duval arched a brow, bracing an elbow on her bent knee. “This should be stunning…”

 

Khan shot her a look. “I was _protecting_ you, Rebecca. Several months ago, while I was researching various alloys for use in the upgraded structural supports built into the Vengeance, I discovered several very interesting articles on the utilization of weaponized cesium as a trigger in ultritium-based explosive devices. The possibilities posed by a water-based detonation system were intriguing to me – doubly so when I began to consider the theoretical post-activation potentiation that the addition of a trilithium resin core might…”

 

“Khan,” Duval cut him off with a snap, cocking her head to the side as she eyed him dubiously. “Were you planning to get to the part where you turning in a requisition form for high-powered explosives with my forged signature plastered across it was for my protection?”

 

Looking mildly put out at having been cut off mid-ramble, Khan sighed. “Because it _was_ for high-powered explosives, Rebecca. Should the request have garnered a particularly negative reaction – as well it might have, given the contents – the blame would have fallen squarely on _me_ rather than _you_.”

 

She frowned, confused. This man… “But it’s _my_ signature.”

 

“No,” Khan said sharply, drawing out the word for emphasis. “It is a _forgery_ of your signature, and a deliberately poor one at that – should the need have arisen, that could have been proven with relative ease.”

 

“It looked pretty damn good to _me_.”

 

A huff. “Clearly you did not observe it closely enough or you would have noticed how the connection angles and baseline slant are horribly out of character for your generally precise hand.” He peeled open the paper, eyeing it dubiously down the length of his nose. “Though it does appear to have done the trick with the Facility Commander, as I rather expected it would.”

 

Duval pulled a face, pushing herself up to her feet with a fairly undignified snort. “How you figure? He flat out denied the request.”

 

Khan arched a brow, tipping his head back so that he could meet her eyes. “Did he indeed?”

 

“Mmhmm…a staffing thing,” she paused, a wide grin stealing over her face as she looked right back down at him. “And speaking of that…”

 

“‘ _Placed the order myself this morning’_ ,” Khan read, holding the form out in front of him dramatically. “‘ _Delivery should be no later than the end of the week…’”_

“What?” Duval lunged down, snatching the paper from his hand. Frowning down at the scrawled note that she had seen him write but hadn’t bothered to read, she felt all her earlier confusion regarding Rafael Vazquez come roaring back. “ _’Don’t worry,’_ ” she continued, reading on from where Khan had stopped, “ _‘I utilized a private supplier; nothing official. Please don’t make me regret this.’_ What the hell…?” she stopped, arms dropping as she looked down to find the bright blue of his gaze already focused steadily on her. “He told me that he had denied the request!”

 

“And so he did,” Khan said quietly, nodding at the paper now fluttering between them, “ _officially_. While I will admit that I find his affection for you irksome, I cannot deny that it has its distinct advantages.”

 

As clearly as all of her questions regarding the form and the forgery had been answered, all of her _other_ questions regarding Vazquez and his trustworthiness had just multiplied exponentially. Bringing the form back up, she stared down at it, all of her concerns casting a pall over the excitement that had been bubbling so hotly in her veins.

 

“Does it bother you?”

 

“Hmmm?” She barely heard the question, she was so wrapped up in her own thoughts.

 

_Why would he do this? All of this? Lying. Risking his own career. For what? For me? When he knows I have no interest in…_

“Using Vazquez – using his…his _feelings_ for you. Does it bother you so very much?”

 

This time, she paid attention, drawn out of her thoughts by the unfamiliar – was that _uncertainty?_ – in Khan’s voice. Blinking hard, she dropped the paper once more and met his gaze – still steady, still entirely focused on her – and sucked in a breath at the shadow that hung there. “Of course it doesn’t bother me,” she said, perhaps a bit more snappish than she had intended. “Why would it?”

 

Khan sniffed; drew himself up, rolling gracefully to his feet and then walking away from her toward the make-shift work bench behind them, covered stem to stern with a full array of tools. “You appear distinctly less than pleased. I can only assume…”

 

“Don’t assume,” Duval interrupted sharply, having no patience for such an uncharacteristic – and frankly ridiculous – display of insecurity, “and don’t be stupid. You know perfectly well that I’ve never hesitated to use… _whatever_ his thing for me is to my advantage. I can hardly fault you for doing the same…even if I would have preferred you to have at least _told me_ about it beforehand so I could be prepared when the subject came up.”

 

Khan, his back to her, gave a nod, his hands ghosting over the lines of carefully arranged tools, straightening here and shifting there. “Duly noted,” he said, low and serious. “Though I should still very much like to know what is troubling you.”

 

“Good. Because I have every intention of telling you.” With that, Duval moved over to stand next to Khan, turning and leaning the small of her back against the edge of the table, her eyes tracing the lines and angles of their little ship, gathering her thoughts.

 

Khan turned as well, facing her now, one hand lifting to cradle her elbow, his thumb caressing the hollow there. “Rebecca?”

 

“Vazquez knows something.” She looked up at him, expression taut with unease. “I don’t know how and I don’t know how _much_ …but he knows something. Definitely about us. Maybe even about what we’re doing…and it makes me very, _very_ nervous.”

 

Khan’s fingers tightened on her arm, though the touch was supportive rather than constricting. “Tell me. Everything.”

 

And she did. Every word she could remember, every flash of intuition that she could recall – she laid them all out for him as faithfully and as vividly as she could. Luckily, years in her particular sort of business had left her with excellent recall and she was confident, once she had finished, that she had left nothing of any real import out. Khan, who had listened silently throughout, sucked in a long, slow breath once she had finished, turning so that they were standing side by side, both now looking at their ship, it’s sleek, black hull shining like an oil slick in the overhead light. His hand, which had been at her elbow, slid down the length of her arm, fingers finding hers; weaving through them as he clasped her hand firmly in his.

 

Duval waited, knowing that there was a whole hell of a lot of thinking, considering and calculating going on inside his head. Holding his hand tight, absently worrying at the side of his index finger with the calloused pad of her thumb, she tried very hard to hold onto the last vestiges of her earlier happiness and finding it increasingly difficult to manage.

 

“It was terribly convenient of the Commander to relay this information now rather than waiting,” he said at last, squeezing her hand and sounding nowhere near as concerned as she was – in fact, sounding, for _him_ , positively ebullient. “A month’s notice will allow us ample time to sort out the final details of our endeavor. Do not you agree, Rebecca?”

 

She blew out a slow breath through her nose, eyes closing as she tried to temper the instant frustration birthed by his words. Of course. _Of course_ he would dismiss everything but the good parts. God knew she loved him, but times like this, that supreme arrogance of his really pushed her buttons.

 

Every. Single. One of them.

 

_Simultaneously._  

“Yeah…having a month is spectacular,” she snipped, tightening _her_ fingers on _his_ , though completely minus the playfulness of his touch. “But we could have all the time in the world and it won’t mean a thing if we’re waltzing straight into a trap, will it?”

 

“No, I suppose it would not,” Khan agreed, none of his good humor dimmed in the slightest, a wide, indulgent smile on his face as he looked down at her. “But take heart…there is no trap.”

 

His casual dismissal of her extraordinarily valid concerns would have been infuriating enough. But that smile…

 

That _smile_.

 

Duval pulled her hand from his, glaring at him viciously. “Do _not_ ,” she warned, “talk to me like I’m an idiot. How the hell can you possibly say ‘ _there is no trap_ ’ with any kind of certainty after everything that I just told you? Did you even _listen_ to me? Vazquez _knows_ , Khan. He has to. Giving me exactly the information I needed…doing it in that suspiciously casual way…” She paused, fingers curling into fists, her nails scoring the skin of her palms. “This all screams ‘trap’ to _me_ and you’re usually ten times more paranoid than I am, so how can it _not_ scream ‘trap’ to _you_?”

 

Khan, his arms crossed over his chest now and his joviality dialed back considerably – though she could still see the shimmer of it in his eyes – sighed, rolling his eyes to the ceiling before swinging them back to her where she had begun to pace in front of him.

 

“Because unlike you, _I_ am considering the source.”

 

Feet coming to an abrupt halt, she whipped around to face him once more, a look of utterly appalled disbelief on her face. “Are you kidding me?” she hissed, rounding on him fully. “You have _got_ to be kidding me. You _cannot_ be standing there trying to tell me that everything is gonna be peachy keen all because Rafael Vazquez has a _crush_ on me.”

 

“That is not what I am saying at all,” Khan said with a scoff, shifting slightly so that he was half-sitting on his work bench. “My confidence in the situation has nothing at all to do with mere _infatuation,_ Rebecca.”

“Well, thank God for that…”

 

“It does, however, have everything to do with the fact that Rafael Vazquez is hopelessly in love with you – has been, I suspect, since you were at Starfleet Academy together.”

 

For a long moment, Duval just stared at him, trying to decide if it really was the utter _joke_ that it sounded like. When Khan just continued to stare back, his face revealing no sign of the teasing she had sincerely been hoping for, she let out sharp bark of incredulous laughter.

 

“You can’t possibly be serious, Khan.”

 

“Unfortunately, I am entirely serious.” Khan’s lips thinned in obvious distaste. “Little though it pleases me to admit, I have long been aware that his regard for you ran far deeper than you ever suspected – which is unsurprising, given how appallingly blind you are to such things, Rebecca.”

 

“Oh my God,” she shook her head, still nearly aghast with disbelief, “that’s really not what I meant. Frankly, I don’t give a shit if Rafael Vazquez thinks I’m the Goddess Aphrodite herself – what I don’t understand is how you think him being _in love_ with me precludes the possibility of this situation being a trap!”

 

At that – _finally_ – his expression changed, all of the lingering amusement draining from his face and leaving a look like stone in its place. “Do you not?”

 

“No!” She moved toward him, furious at him for not understanding. “You used to accuse _me_ of being Marcus’ lackey…but Vazquez actually _is_ a lackey. He’s Section brass to the core; power and politics tucked safely behind a desk while the rest of us _do_ the _real_ work. No one gets to the position that he’s in without selling their soul just a little bit in the process! And you really think that him _loving_ me would stop him from _eliminating_ me if the price was right?”

 

If possible, Khan’s countenance turned even colder, flinty and distant like it hadn’t been in a very long time. “You think so little of love, then?”

 

As fiery hot as he was glacially cold, Duval nearly erupted out of her skin at that, slamming a furious fist against the outside of her thigh with a growl of utter frustration. “Oh…my… _God_! For a goddamn super-genius, you’re being unimaginably _stupid_ right now.” She stalked forward, closing the distance between them, fully invading his personal space and not the least bit sorry about it. “I don’t _think so little of love_ , Khan. I _think so little_ of _Vazquez_ – especially when trusting him runs the potential risk of putting _your_ life and _your_ people in danger! I barely trust _myself_ with this, let alone someone like _him_.”

 

She was breathing hard when she finished and she could feel the flush in her cheeks, knew they must be absolutely glowing red; a wisp of hair tickled her temple, caught at the corner of her eye, dislodged in the heat of her zeal – but she didn’t care about any of that. Everything that she cared about in the entire universe stood directly in front of her, staring at her now through eyes that _burned_. Faltering beneath the scorch of that look – would her first instinct ever _not_ be to retreat? – Duval nevertheless held her ground, fists clenching at her side.

 

“You’re putting way too much faith in the feelings of a man that I’ve barely _seen_ in the past decade, let alone actually interacted with.” She leaned in even closer, nearly touching him now, her eyes dropping, landing on the jut of his collarbone beneath the well-cut fabric of his shirt. “Vazquez doesn’t know me well enough to love me, Khan. Not really. Not _truly_. Not like…” she stopped, the rest of the sentence dying on her tongue, though it rang like a clarion call through her mind.

 

_Not like you do_.

 

Too presumptuous, that. Far too presumptuous; and far too terrifying to boot. If she was wrong, the correction would break her. If she was _right_ …

 

Well.

 

If she was right, that was its own special sort of scary.

 

Paralyzed by her own loose lips, Duval kept on staring at his throat, distantly fascinated by the jump of his Adam’s apple beneath black fabric and white skin. She desperately wanted to say something else, something to break the sudden tension that had coiled tight between them…but her mind had gone blank; empty save for all the things she hadn’t yet worked up the courage to say.

 

Luckily for her, Khan was far better at this part than she was and before she could start blurting out confessions best saved for better times, a large hand had wrapped around the back of her neck. Drawing her to him with a firm tug, pressing her forehead against the very spot she had just been admiring, he dipped his head, lips resting against the crown of hers.

 

“You make a convincing argument,” he said, the dark purr of his voice and the warmth of his breath sending chills across her scalp and down her spine, “and it would indeed be foolish to ignore the risk of betrayal.” His fingers tightened, flexing against the tensed cords of muscle bracketing her spine. “But, Rebecca, so too would we be foolish to dismiss so perfect an opportunity out of hand.”

 

Eyes closed, breathing him in, Duval pushed even closer, her hands coming up to grab at his waist, fisting the fabric there. “I know,” she breathed. “But the risk…”

 

“…is inherent,” Khan finished for her. “That is a reality of which we have both been well aware from the very beginning of this venture. We _must_ risk, Rebecca…else our plan shall only ever be precisely that – a _plan_ , withered and unrealized.”

 

He was right, unfortunately, and Duval’s shoulders slumped, weighed down by the admittance of it. She inhaled, long and slow, exhaling a resigned sigh. “I still don’t like trusting Vazquez.”

 

“Then we will not trust him.” Khan urged her backwards a step, tipping her face up to his with a finger perched beneath her chin. “We will trust _us_. More specifically, we will trust _you_.”

 

“Meaning what?”

 

“Observe him, Rebecca. Test him, if you must. You have impeccable instincts – _use_ them. And once you have, if you find yourself satisfied that his intentions favor us as greatly as I very much believe they do, then we shall proceed as planned, with our timeline in place at last.”

 

Duval’s brows went up and she leaned away from his touch, expression vaguely challenging as she looked up at him. “And if what I find _out_ proves _me_ right instead?”

 

Khan, arms once more crossed over his chest as he half-sat on his work table, gave a shrug. “Either way, we have several weeks ahead of us to shore up our strategy – should you uncover any reason to truly doubt him, we will adjust accordingly.” He shifted, a new gleam glinting from behind his eyes, turning them fire-bright. “Certainly our plan is not so set in stone as to preclude alteration. Particularly if the changes made are to our distinct benefit.”

 

That gleam…she _knew_ that gleam…

 

She _hated_ that gleam…

 

_Calculation_.

 

Head craning back even further, Duval’s eyes narrowed as she folded her own arms across her chest, mirroring his stance.  “So…just that simple, huh? I give Vazquez a once over, I don’t like what I see and that’s it – it’s done and gone and we go right back to square one with no workable timeline in sight…and you’re perfectly fine with that?”

 

Another shrug, accompanied by a solicitous nod of his dark head. “Happily,” he said without even the slightest hesitation. “I do, as I said, have every faith in your instincts, Rebecca.”

 

He topped off that rather remarkable statement with a smile, wide and easy and…completely, utterly _fake_ , setting off the claxon call of warning bells in her mind. Warning bells that she had no intention of ignoring for even one second.

 

“Bullshit,” she barked at him, hip jutting out and head cocking to the side as she glared at him pointedly.

 

Khan jerked his head backwards, surprise – _fake_ surprise, the prick – etching itself large over his face. “I beg your pardon?”

 

Her glare eased into a look that was teeming with unamused disbelief. “I said, _bullshit_. I’ve watched you throw full-on temper tantrums over even the tiniest, most insignificant changes to your schedule. You really think I’m gonna believe that you’d _happily_ change something this big and important?”

 

“I would,” he insisted, though the tone of his voice wasn’t nearly as bright as it had been before. He paused, considered and then dipped his head in acknowledgement. “Though perhaps, in retrospect, _happily_ was a touch hyperbolic…”

 

“Enough _,”_ Duval snapped, dropping her arms to her sides in a huff. “You blow any more smoke at me and I _might_ just asphyxiate. So do us both a favor and just tell me what’s going on!”

 

Khan went silent, lips pressing together as he stared down at her and then, suddenly – _thankfully_ – the mild mannered pretense evaporated, disappearing like a puff of smoke on a strong breeze. “You will not like this,” he warned plainly, entirely unapologetic.

 

Happy that he’d dropped the act, but even less reassured by the sheer gravity of his tone, Duval swallowed then shrugged, quick and jerky. “When has that ever stopped you before?”

 

“Too right,” he allowed, dipping his chin to acknowledge the point. Then, he appeared to steady himself, sitting up straighter, shoulders squaring and jaw cutting a grim line across the bottom of his face; he met her eyes squarely, hands clasped together and resting on his lap. “I intend to take the Vengeance.”

 

Duval blinked. Frowned. Blinked again.

 

She had misunderstood. She _had_ to have misunderstood.

 

“I’m sorry… _what_?”

 

“The Vengeance,” Khan reiterated, firm and determined despite the hooded wariness of his gaze. “She is mine and I intend to take her.”

 

Ah. Apparently, she _hadn’t_ misunderstood.

 

Outstanding.

 

Duval, trying very hard to stay calm and collected when all she really wanted to do was scream, reached up and scrubbed her hands over her face, blowing a long sigh through her tightly pursed lips. In the back of her mind, a little voice – irritating and nearly impossible to ignore – whispered at her that she really, _really_ should have expected this...

 

“Have you nothing to say?”

 

She snapped her hands down and her eyes open, pinning him with a look so blank and stony that it could very well have graced his own face. “Is there anything I _can_ say? Sounded to me like you’d already made up your mind pretty thoroughly.”

 

“And so I have,” Khan huffed, pushing off the table and turning his back to her, long fingers dipping down to the worktop to fiddle with the first tool that came to hand. “I have invested far too much of my time and effort and ingenuity into that ship to simply walk away from it now. Particularly not when walking away means leaving it in the hands of Alexander Marcus.”

 

“So then why even bother _asking_ me?” she snapped, throwing her arms up and glaring viciously at the back of his head. “Clearly I have no say either way, so what does it even matterwhat I think?”

 

Khan stopped, hands stilling and head coming up, though he kept his back to her. “You are angry.”

 

“You _think_?!” The words _erupted_ out of her, loud and messy and furious though they may as well have been sweetly whispered for all the reaction they got out of Khan. “Not only did you just completely and unilaterally change the plans that we spent _weeks_ putting together, you also went and complicated the absolute _shit_ out of an already ridiculously complicated situation to boot!”

 

Dropping the tool he had been holding – something long and thin that she neither had a name for nor cared to learn the name for – Khan turned back around to face her, his chin tipping up proudly and his eyes gleaming with a unique blend of resolve and entreaty. “While I will own to the dictatorial nature of my actions, this will not, in fact, further complicate the situation. If anything, incorporating the Vengeance into our plans will _simplify_ things considerably!”

 

Eyes widening in sheer, dumbfounded disbelief, Duval shook her head. “I can’t even...,” she began, the words drifting off before being swallowed whole by a whoop of utterly incredulous laughter. “Khan…how the _hell_ do you even begin to imagine _that_?”

 

“In truly exquisite detail, if you must know,” he snipped, sounding very nearly as frustrated as she felt. “If you will allow me to explain it to you, I have every confidence that you shall as well.”

 

“Again,” Duval lobbed back at him, glare intensifying once more, “do I really have a choice?”

 

“ _You_ have _always_ had a choice. _You_ may walk away at any time.” He stopped, the weight of his gaze pressing at her intensely. “ _I_ am the one without choice. _I_ am the one who may not simply _walk away_.”

 

_Oh, he **would**_ …

 

Narrowing her eyes at him, she crossed her arms over her chest, a picture-perfect representation of deep, abiding and frankly enraging annoyance. “That,” she said quietly, very matter-of-factly, “is just about the _most_ emotionally manipulative thing I have ever heard you say.”

 

His expression shifted minutely, left brow winging ever so slightly upwards. “And has it worked?”

 

“A whole hell of a lot better than it should have, to be honest,” Duval admitted, her turn, for once, to be just a little bit petulant. Deflated of the worst of her anger – though still harboring a _very_ healthy ration of annoyance – she huffed, her shoulders dropping. “Now before I turn into a complete doormat, would you please make me feel at least a little bit better about all of this by explaining how stealing the Vengeance is going to _simplify_ things – especially when I just told you that it’s going to be _gone_ during this whole thing? Where exactly in our itinerary were you planning to squeeze it in?”

 

“We would wait until it returned, obviously – I know enough of Marcus; he will want to celebrate their successful return with all conceivable pomp and circumstance. During the inevitable madhouse that will follow, we would easily be able to board the ship and take it for our own. Once we have done that, the rest will become extraordinarily simple.” Khan reached behind him, blindly plucking her PADD from where it rested on the table behind him – considering everything, it remained always within easy distance of at least one of them. Flicking and tapping until he had pulled up what he wanted, he turned the device around, revealing the point-by-point breakdown of their current plan. “Sixteen steps,” he said sharply. “Are you aware that there are sixteen steps that we must see done before we even _reach_ the Hornby Bay facility itself?”

 

Duval cocked her head, eyeing him dubiously. “Yeah…and?”

 

Khan sighed, dropping the PADD to his side as he took another step toward her. “If we were to take the Vengeance, we could bypass every single one of those steps,” he insisted, voice pitching low; captivating as it poured like dark, amber honey from his lips. “If we were to take the Vengeance, we could be finished with the _entire_ operation in less than an hour, Rebecca. Once she was ours, we would simply need to make the jump to Earth, beam my people on board and then make our escape. And once we _had_ escaped, we would have the added benefit of a ship large enough to house the entire crew, weapons enough to defend ourselves adequately and supplies enough to sustain us indefinitely…” he paused, expression as open and beseeching as ever she had seen it. “Can you not see the very real advantages in that?”

 

It was an idyllic picture that he painted – appealing, tempting…and absolutely, spot on _right_. Having the Vengeance _would_ make their lives afterthe rescue and escape immensely easier. But the key word in that was _after_. _During_ …

 

Well, now.

 

_During_ was a whole other story.

 

“You’re right. You’re _so_ right…except for the parts where you’re completely wrong.” She shook her head, once again scrubbing her hands over her face in frustration before slanting an accusatory look his way. “Damn it, Khan…you never even _bothered_ to read the full dossier I gave you on Hornby, did you?”

 

A huff. “What has _that_ to do with anything?”

 

_Ah_...evidently, she was frustrating him too.

 

_Good._

 

“It has everything to do with anything, actually,” Duval shot back. “Because if you _had_ read it, you would have learned all about the experimental magnetic shielding that was installed at the base in January of this year. The experimental magnetic shielding that was developed after some of our Agents reconned a particularly nasty Klingon prison facility.” She squeezed her arms in tighter, cocking a hip out to the side as she continued to stare Khan down. “And most importantly, the experimental magnetic shielding that is designed specifically to block all incoming signals from reaching the facility-proper – up to and including _…transporter beams_.”

 

Khan’s expression froze, his eyes, so full of beguilement only moments before, icing over, swallowing the disappointment that had flared so briefly yet so bright at her revelation. “ _Why_ did you never speak a word of this before?”

 

Duval could only look at him, trying very hard not to respond in kind to the sharp edge of his tongue. “Because it had absolutely no bearing on our situation whatsoever,” she answered, slightly more acerbic than she had meant, but far less biting than it could have been. “Had I known you’d up and decide something like this, I promise you I’d have made a much bigger deal out of the shielding from the get go.”

 

Khan moved past her, pacing now, back and forth beside where she was standing, his hands clenched into fists at his sides as he moved up and down the room. “And you are sure,” he said, tossing her a look as he continued to move, “you are absolutely _certain_ that this shielding is not only in place, but that it works?”

 

“I don’t know,” she whined, face twisting into a pained grimace. “But are you really willing to risk calling Marcus’ bluff? I mean, I know that everything we’re doing here is a risk,” she said, echoing his words from earlier only with slightly more attitude than he had initially imbued them with, “and that taking chances is the only way this’ll work at all and all that…but Khan, seriously…you can’t just…”

 

“Yes, yes,” he cut in, waving away her words curtly as he continued to pace. “I am well aware that it would be foolhardy to risk quite _that_ much.” He stopped, shoulders dropping, dejection hanging over him like a shroud. “No matter how much I might like to try.”

 

Not knowing quite what to say to that, Duval simply closed the distance between them, slipping her arms around his waist and resting her cheek against his spin. Holding him tight, pulling the scent of him as deep into her lungs as she could, she let out a puff of breath against his back. “I know. I’m sorry to have ruined it for you.”

 

Khan said nothing to that, merely reached up and laid his arms over hers where they circled his waist, gripping her wrists and pulling her even tighter against his back. For a long moment, they simply stood there, silent. Thinking.

 

_Thinking_.

 

Of all the things Duval hadn’t wanted to do any more of that afternoon…

 

But it was there, niggling, just under her skin. A thought…spurred by _his_ thought. A thought that was already beginning to sound like a full blown _idea_ to her apparently masochistic brain. Chewing on the inside of her lip, deep in thought, Duval decided that there was only one way to figure out if that _idea_ had any kind of legs at all.

 

“We…we _might_ be able to make it work,” she said, cautious as she let the words out. “Not the way you were saying, but…a _different_ way. Something… _after_ we get them into the torpedoes, maybe?” Her brain was spinning, cranking away. “Like…I don’t know…we could always just let the transport pick them up at Hornby? We can adjust the itinerary remotely and just wait for them here.” She chewed at her lip, thinking hard. “Then we don’t have to worry about taking the Vengeance anywhere but _away._ Once we have it, we would just beam the torpedoes on board and bolt from there.”

 

In her arms, she could feel Khan’s entire body stiffen; could feel the way he stood up just that much straighter. “You would be willing to consider it?”

 

Duval turned her face into his back, a very large, very loud part of her wondering where the _hell_ her brain had gone. “It makes sense,” she finally said, her voice muffled against the fabric of his shirt, shrugging one shoulder, bobbing it up just the tiniest bit. “So much sense that I think I might actually be willing to consider it, yes. I feel like a complete idiot saying that, because it really does sound like _such_ a ridiculous idea…but there it is.”

 

Khan turned in her arms, facing her now as her hands, once on his waist, now rested at the small of his back, folded neatly over one another. Placing a large hand at the back of her head, Khan cradled her skull in his palm, looking down at her with eagerness, the gleam back in his eyes once more. “It will be no easy thing,” he said, an agreement of sorts with her reticence. “But I believe we can do it.”

 

Looking up at him, her insides reduced to utter uselessness at the sight of his renewed eagerness, she attempted a smile, though it was half-hearted at best. “Yeah?”

 

His smile then was brilliant, his eyes shining diamond-bright as he leaned in, laying his forehead against hers, the touch gentle. Reverent. “My Rebecca,” he said, the words a delicate whisper of sound as they rolled across her skin, “what couldwe _not_ do?”

 

Well… _hell_ …

 

Duval melted into him, sliding her hands up his back, skating the arc of his shoulder blades to find the tops of his shoulders. Grabbing tight, she pulled herself up and against him, tucking her body neatly against his, pressing her forehead to his with an entirely new vigor.

 

They had so much more to do now than they had only a few short hours prior – they had a timeline…and apparently, a whole new plan. Or at least, a whole new addition to their already perfectly crafted plan.

 

It didn’t thrill her, truth be told. The idea of stealing the Vengeance…it really, _really_ didn’t thrill her. Plus, they were now working on a very strict deadline and they now had a whole hell of a lot of stuff to get figured out before it came due.

 

His confidence – his _faith_ – in her, in _them_...it made her think that maybe – _just maybe_ – he was right. Maybe they _could_ pull this off…

 

Khan pulled back then, only to push forward immediately, parted lips catching hers in a kiss that she felt from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. Kissing him back with everything that she had in her to give at that moment, Duval decided that – just for now – all the rest of it could go hang.

 

They would figure it all out. They would make it all work.

 

But just for now…it was all going to have to wait.

 

 


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that updates have gotten farther apart, and for that, I apologize. Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone still reading this story. I love each and every one of you!
> 
> Thank you, as always, to my beta, Xaraphis. Even sick as a dog, you’re the best editor in the whole wide world. ;)

_(5 weeks later – Stardate 2258.318)_

One day to go.

 

One. More. Day.

 

Which, to be honest, was a good thing. A _very_ good thing.

 

Because Rebecca Duval was officially nearing the end of her rope. So much so that, if Alexander Marcus wasn’t careful, she was liable to take what little she had left, tie off a noose and _hang_ the son of a bitch with it…

 

_‘Putting the work first, Lieutenant. That’s what I like to see.’ A hand falls, clapping her on the shoulder, squeezing tight; his expression carefully arranged into a solemnity that was belied by the crowing satisfaction glittering in his eyes. ‘Your father would be proud of you, kiddo. Damn proud.’_

He had hugged her then. _Hugged_ her.

“Son of a bitch is lucky I wasn’t _armed_ ,” Duval muttered to herself as she stalked down the corridor toward their quarters, immaculate in her dress blacks, cover tucked neatly under her arm – the absolute picture of polished Section 31 excellence.  

 

It wasn’t often that she found herself required to make use of her stiffly pressed and entirely too stifling parade uniform, but today had been an exception. Today, Admiral Marcus had arrived in advance of the Vengeance’s test flight and Facility Commander Vazquez, in his ineffable wisdom, had decided that such an occasion called for a little bit more than standard official greeting procedure. As such, he had _respectfully requested_ the presence of all non-essential facility personnel in shuttle bay one, including all Agents of rank.

 

Khan had taken one look at the official request message, scoffed dismissively and then passed it along to her, his refusal of the summons as absolute as it was tacit. Not that she minded in the slightest – they were _so close_ to the end now and he had such a viciously short temper where Marcus was concerned. No…far better for him to stay safely sequestered in their quarters and leave the pomp and circumstance to her…

 

Which, it turned out, had been an even better idea than she’d believed at the time.

 

Exactly on time and dressed in her official best, she had walked into shuttle bay one with her head held high and proud and had taken her place in line with her fellows, waiting to greet the man that she was about to betray. As she had stood there, hands clasped behind her back at parade rest, it had occurred to her that she should probably feel at least _some_ guilt over what she was about to do; some shred of regret for the life she was walking away from. She hadn’t much experience with this sort of thing, but it seemed like she should, at the very least, feel at least a _little_ sad about it all.

 

But then, the Admiral’s shuttle had arrived and he had strutted his way down the gangplank, customarily smug smirk planted firmly on his face, and she found that she couldn’t muster even the faintest shadow of either regret _or_ sorrow. In fact, the only thing she had felt at that moment was impatience.

 

There were so many _other_ things she could have been doing at that moment. So many other more _important_ things – last minute details to be seen to, loose ends to tie up. But no, she’d had to stand there, uncomfortable as hell in a uniform that she hated like the good little underling that she no longer was; like the good little underling that she only had to _pretend_ to be for just a little…bit…longer…

 

She had hidden it well though, tucking away her true feelings behind the mask of pleasant indifference that she had spent years perfecting. As always, it served her well. Marcus, pleased as punch by the lavish welcome, had been in high spirits as he went down the line, shaking hands and blowing smoke like the politician he absolutely was. When he’d come to her at last, he had smiled wide as he shook her hand vigorously between both of his, before insisting that she walk with him to his quarters.

 

Seeing no way to decline the invitation without risking the loss of his good will – something she vehemently looked forward to never having to give a single shit about ever again – she had answered with a snappy salute and a broad grin before stepping out of line to stand at his side, removing her cover as she did so and securing it beneath her arm. A few minutes later, she had found herself strolling up and down the winding corridors with him, a trail of sycophants tromping along behind them.

 

He had talked as they walked, speaking on a number of different subjects – none of which she cared about in the _least_. Finally, just as they rounded the final turn into the corridor that would take them to his door, he had stopped, turning to her with a look of such patently false chagrin painted across his face that she damn near started laughing on the spot.

 

Then he’d started _talking_ …and her good mood had gone straight to hell…

 

 _Presumptuous, uppity old **prick**_.

 

She chicken-pecked the security code into the control panel outside their door, jabbing each subsequent number just a little bit harder than the last. Stomping through the door the second it slid open ahead of her, she paused just over the threshold, feeling the faint breeze on the back of her neck as it whispered back shut behind her.

 

At which point, she pulled her cover from beneath her arm, glared down at it, and then reared back and threw it across the room as hard as she possibly could. It curved mid-flight, slamming into the wall just beyond the door to her room with an extraordinarily satisfying _crack_.

 

“Well,” Khan’s voice sounded in the silence that followed, “I suppose that rather efficiently answers the question of how it went.”

 

Duval didn’t bother to look for him, his voice all the assurance of his presence that she needed at present. Tearing her gloves off, she chucked them to the floor and then began working at the fastenings of her coat, uneven nails – worry-bitten and ragged – catching on the coarse fabric as she released the clasp at her neck.

 

“In case I’ve never said it before,” she snapped to the room at large, once she had peeled the coat from her shoulders, “I’d just like to state, for the record, that I _hate_ that old son of a bitch.”

 

His answer was a low hum, a rumble of acknowledgment that issued from the general vicinity of the sofa. “Take care, Lieutenant Duval…such vitriol directed at your Commanding Officer treads dangerously close to Conduct Unbecoming.”

 

“Oh, fuck my conduct,” Duval barked as she marched further into the room, dumping her coat in a heap on top of her cover where it lay on the floor near her door. Her eyes _did_ seek Khan then, finding him sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the sofa, as usual. He was reading, one arm sprawled across the seat of the sofa, the other propped on his bent knee. Starting toward him, she yanked off her belt and tossed it carelessly behind her. “He’s lucky I didn’t boot that self-righteous smirk right off his ugly-ass face. I’m half-tempted to go straight on back there and do it anyway.”

 

“Mmm, yes,” Khan said and she could hear the laughter that he was only just managing to hold in check, “while I cannot deny that I would _greatly_ enjoy watching you do precisely that, it would not, I fear, bode well for our plans.”

 

Beside him now, she scoffed loudly, tugging her neatly tucked shirt out from beneath the waistband of her pants before dropping gracelessly onto the sofa seat. “So you’d have to break me out of the brig,” she dismissed with a negligent flick of her fingers. “An extra half hour seems like a perfectly reasonable price to pay for the privilege of kicking Marcus in the teeth.”

 

Now, Khan _did_ laugh, laying down his book – her ancient copy of _The Wood Beyond the World_ – before turning to look up at her over his shoulder. “Much as I adore your more violent tendencies,” he said, only half-teasing, “dare I ask precisely what sins the Admiral has committed to inspire such hostility?”

 

She let out a huff, hunching over, elbows braced on her knees. “It’s _Marcus_ ,” she said, arching a brow at him pointedly, “when _doesn’t_ he inspire hostility?”

 

“Touché,” Khan quipped, turning his head forward once more, though she could see the grin pulling up the corner of his mouth. He poked at the corner of the book absently, sending it shuffling across the top of the table. “Still though,” he said after a moment, stealing a quick look at her before shifting his eyes across the room, chin coming up as he looked toward where the discarded bits of her uniform lay abandoned, “I rather suspect that his unpleasantness went particularly beyond the pale this time. I fear your hat may never be the same.”

 

“It’s called a _cover_.”

 

“ _Rebecca_ …”

 

Duval huffed and then flopped sideways, twisting as she fell so that she landed on her back along the length of the sofa, leaving her feet to dangle over the side. Staring straight up at the ceiling, she plucked at the hem of her dress shirt, mulishly determined not to talk about it. “It’s over and done with. Why do I have to rehash it?”

 

Khan turned entirely then, angling himself so that he sat parallel to her and she could feel his eyes on her face. “Because I know you, Rebecca Duval – the more obstinately silent you are, the more desperately you _need_ to speak.”

 

Well…shit.

 

It was exactly the right thing to say and exactly the right time to say it…and there was exactly _no way_ for her to get out of talking about it now.

 

He would have to go and be like _that_ about it.

 

Swallowing against the lump that his stupidly perfect words had lodged in her throat, Duval let go of her shirt to reach over and slip her fingers into his where they lay beside her, pulling their now joined hands up to rest over her stomach. Giving him a squeeze – which he immediately returned – she let her thumb wander over his skin.

 

“It started off fine,” she said at last, resigned. “The old bastard was in high cotton when he walked off the ship and saw the ridiculous three ring circus that Vazquez had organized. I’d hoped he’d just shake my hand, slap me on the back and then keep on walking.”

 

“I take it he did not, in fact, _keep on walking_.”

 

“Of course he didn’t.” Duval cocked her head to the side, reaching up with her free hand to pull the tie out of her hair, tossing it towards the coffee table without actually caring if it landed there or not. “Everyone else got to make their curtsey and then go grab a drink…but me? I get stuck walking the son of a bitch to his quarters because there were things he needed to _discuss_ with me, which of course meant that I spent the entire time listening to him run his mouth, pretending that I actually gave a damn about what he was saying.”

 

A noise of distaste from beside her. “You’ve far more patience than I.”

 

She smiled, rolling her head so that she could look at him. “Since you’d as soon snap Marcus’ neck as look at him, I’m not sure that’s saying a whole lot.”

 

Khan’s lips twitched upwards in an answering smirk. “Perhaps not. But the point still stands.”

 

Duval’s smile turned wry. “Yeah, well, it almost didn’t this time. I damn near told the old man what he could do with himself. I mean, the half-assed ‘apology’ about not being included on the roster for the test flight didn’t bother me so much – even if it was completebullshit.”

 

“I would have expected no less.”

 

Warming to the conversation, she rolled over onto her side, their joined hands falling back to the couch. She propped her head on her free hand, hair falling in messy waves around her face. “Then it was just the same old song, all over again. _So good to have you back…keep your focus on the work._ And then, of course, my _absolute_ favorite – _your father would be proud_. It always comes down to that now. Every time I talk to him it’s, _your father would be proud_ or _if your father could see you now_ ,” she mocked, her tone turning sharp, hard. “As if he has _any_ idea what my father would think or feel.”

 

“It is manipulation,” Khan said quietly, his fingers tightening on hers, “nothing more, nothing less. He seeks to wound you; to wield the memory of your father as a weapon against you, believing that in doing so, he furthers his power over you.” He paused, frowning slightly as he leaned in toward her, his eyes trained unerringly on hers. “You know this, Rebecca – you know his game.”

 

“I _do_ know his game,” she agreed, “and that’s the problem. I _know_ what he’s doing and I’d love nothing more than to knock him on his ass for it…but I can’t do that, can I? No…I’ve got to just…just stand there and _take it_. To stand there and _smile_ while he uses…”

 

“…the people you love against you,” Khan finished for her, voice strained and eyes gone dark, bleak. He reached out toward her, elegant fingers unfurling as he smoothed the messy halo of her hair away from her face, twirling an errant chestnut lock almost absently; pulling the already loose curl entirely straight before setting it free. “I also know his game, Rebecca,” he said quietly, eyes riveted to the coil of hair as it fell against her cheek. “I’ve been unwillingly playing it for very nearly a year now.”

 

There was a brittleness to his words, an aching edge of angry futility that she had heard in his voice a thousand times before and had always sympathized with, but hadn’t truly been able tocomprehend.

 

But now…

 

Now she got it. Now she understood.

 

Duval’s temper, so hot only moments before, cooled; her expression – and her resolve – hardening. She shoved herself swiftly upright and swung her legs around, dropping them to the floor beside Khan. The suddenness of the movement had caught him off guard and he jerked backwards. Duval took advantage of the space created between his body and the couch, sliding over until she was sitting directly in front of him, her legs bracketing his body. One large hand settled on the jut of her hip and his head tipped back, eyes locking onto hers – questioning even as he attempted to stifle his frustrated grief. Staring right back at him, she brought her hands to his face, molding to his cheeks, her thumbs caressing the shadowed hollows just beneath his cheekbones.

 

“Never again,” she declared, voice sharp with furious determination. She pushed herself sideways, forward, catching his lips in a swift, searing kiss. “We’ll never let him think he owns us again,” she murmured once she had pulled back, shivering as Khan’s hand moved from her hip, sliding beneath her shirt, calloused palm skating across the skin of her lower back, pressing her even closer.

 

“Never again,” Khan echoed before surging up to capture her lips once more, kissing her almost desperately as he shifted up onto his knees, bringing his face level with hers, his free hand sweeping up her side to palm her breast. With a choked, breathless groan against his lips, Duval’s head tipped back, breaking their kiss. Her hands fell from his face to his shoulders, back arching as she pressed herself even more firmly against his, her mind blanking to everything but him.  

 

Wasting no time, Khan lowered his head to the exposed column of her throat, mouthing the throbbing pulse point just beneath her jaw, teeth nipping at her skin. “And after tomorrow,” the words were growled against her skin, the heated words sending a shudder through her, “he will see…,” he kneaded her breast, rolling her peaked nipple between his thumb and forefinger and causing her to cry out, “he will know…”

 

Duval wrapped her hands around the back of his neck, pulling herself upright once more to wrap around him, her mouth now on _his_ neck, licking and sucking her way up to his ear. “He’ll know,” she whispered, finishing the thought that had escaped him beneath her onslaught, “that he never owned us at all.”

 

With a groan that she felt down to the tips of her toes, Khan abandoned her breast and wrapped his hand in her hair, pulling her up for another devouring kiss. As his mouth moved over hers, he turned, angling her sideways as he lowered her back down to the sofa cushions. He followed her down, still on his knees, kissing her into oblivion while one hand worked its way beneath the waist of her pants…

 

The electronic trill of the door chime sounded through the room, loud and long and – unfortunately – completely impossible to ignore. Khan and Duval both went still, hands freezing in place as their lips drew apart with an audible pop.

 

“Were you expecting company?”

 

Khan’s voice was barely a whisper, but was thick with the same thwarted passion that Duval knew _must_ be etched into every single line of her own body. Shooting him a pointed glare, she bucked her hips up slightly beneath his questing fingers. “Does it _look_ like I was expecting company?”

 

“I suppose not,” he allowed grudgingly. Then, his lips twitched as humor began to replace his frustration and Khan arched a brow at her, dancing his fingers teasingly against her center. “It certainly does not _feel_ like you were expecting company.”

 

Duval pulled a face at him and slapped at his hand, squirming her way upright. “Oh my God, Khan,” she hissed, “ _really_?”

 

“What?”

 

The mock-innocence of the question made her roll her eyes even as a grin pressed at the corners of her mouth. “You are such a _man_ ,” she huffed, pushing at his chest. “Move!”

 

Now it was his turn to pull a face, his smile falling into the petulant pout that she would never, under _any_ circumstances, admit to finding attractive. “Must I?”

 

The door chimed again and she gave him the closest thing to a frown that she could manage. “Yes, you must,” she insisted, though without any real conviction – like him, she was _far_ happier precisely where she was, but duty called. Unfortunately. “The sooner I deal with whoever it is, the sooner we can get back to what we were doing.”

 

“Excellent point,” he conceded, pulling back from her entirely.

 

A moment later, he was settled back on the floor and Duval was approaching the door, looking mussed but presentable. Not wanting to give anyone any possible reason to be suspicious of them _at all_ , Duval didn’t bother to ask who it was. Activating the door, she plastered a welcoming smile on her face, ready for anyone, up to and including Alexander Marcus.

 

When the door hissed open to reveal Rafael Vazquez instead, her smile faltered ever so slightly. She had spent the better part of the past month convincing herself that the man in front of her was trustworthy. He had certainly passed every subtle test she had thrown at him with flying colors. And while she was, she could now say, quite reasonably certain that he meant them no harm, it didn’t change the fact that there was something about him that just…itched at her…

 

It wasn’t a good feeling. It wasn’t a bad feeling. It was just…a _feeling_.

 

A feeling that seemed to linger, no matter what he said or did.

 

Pushing it down, she forced her smile wide. “Commander Vazquez,” she greeted warmly, “to what do we owe this unexpected pleasure?”

 

His return smile was subdued but genuine, a wry quirk in the twist of his lips. “There are a few details regarding the next few days that I need to go over with you and Commander Harrison.” Looking her up and down as unobtrusively as possible, his smile broadened though the humor in it faded somewhat. “Is this a bad time?”

 

“No,” she assured him, glancing over her shoulder as she spoke to find Khan seated now in the far corner of the sofa, his head bent over his book once more, “not at all. Please, come in.” She stepped aside, motioning for him to enter.

 

He hesitated for a moment before complying, but then he stepped past her, stopping just beyond where she was standing. Duval shut the door behind him – there was something to this, she could feel it; something more than a simple debrief – and then started walking back toward Khan. Several steps along, she realized that hers were the only footfalls she heard and she stopped, turning back to find Vazquez standing exactly where she’d left him. Frowning, she took several steps back toward him, noting the faint lines of discomfort around his eyes and mouth.

 

“Commander…?”

 

“You’re _certain_ this is a good time? Because I can…I could come back later…”

 

He was looking past her and Duval, frown deepening, turned slightly to follow the line of his eyes all the way down to…

 

…the discarded heap of her dress uniform…

 

_Oh. Well…shit…_

 

“It isn’t what it looks like,” she said sharply, cheeks burning as she fought the urge to bolt across the room and kick the seemingly incriminating pile out of sight. Shifting uncomfortably beneath Vazquez’s continued scrutiny – and pointedly ignoring his look of flat disbelief – she plucked at the collar of her shirt, feeling suddenly claustrophobic within its confines. “I just…I _hate_ this damn uniform,” she snapped, annoyed at herself for being so damn awkward…and at Vazquez on sheer principal alone. “And considering how quickly _you_ changed out of it, I’d say you’re right there with me, so don’t stand there looking at me like you have no idea what I’m talking about.”

 

Smiling now out of real amusement, Vazquez – who was indeed garbed in his everyday blacks once more – held his hands up between them, palms out in surrender. “Sorry…you’re right,” he assured, “I’m not particularly in love with the uniform anymore myself.” He stopped, smile fading into a look that she had seen on his face all too often recently – grim determination. “In fact, I’ve found wearing it to be…increasingly uncomfortable of late.”

 

The _feeling_ welled up inside of her once again; welled up and then expanded outward, thickening the air between them. “Is that so?” Duval asked quietly – recognizing the potential significance of the moment. The tension in the room was suddenly a near palpable thing and she stole a quick glance behind her to see that Khan was every bit as invested in the conversation as she was, his book lying forgotten on the floor beside him. Finding reassurance in the fierce blue of his eyes as they met hers, she gave him a tiny nod before turning back around to face the Facility Commander once more. “What’s wrong, Commander? Doesn’t it fit right anymore?”

 

It was a deliberate challenge, and, to his credit, Rafael Vazquez answered it with more aplomb than Duval had previously credited him with possessing. He straightened, squared his shoulders and lifted his chin, exuding entirely the right kind of pride. “No, it doesn’t,” he said, firm and unapologetic as he looked her right in the eye. “It hasn’t for quite a while now, I’m sorry to say.”

 

Duval narrowed her eyes at him, reading his every shift, every twitch. Everything about him screamed _truth_ …but every instinct she possessed shied away from believing it. She had known him so long as nothing more than a useless bootlicker that it was difficult to see him as anything else – as anything _more_. Torn and wary of making a misstep when they were so _close_ to the end, she twisted around, looking to Khan for support.

 

As if he had been waiting for precisely that, Khan’s eyes met hers, an entire conversation passing between them in that one look. Duval, reading the reassurance in his gaze, bobbed her head once in acknowledgment before turning back to Vazquez. He hadn’t moved, but his eyes had strayed to Khan, his expression for once lacking the unabashed dislike that he had never bothered to hide.

 

On the surface, it appeared an advantageous shift. But Duval couldn’t quite bring herself to celebrate it quite yet.

 

“Since I’m running short on patience at present,” she said finally, drawing the Facility Commander’s eyes back to her, “let’s just get this out there from the get go – you can speak freely here. The security feeds in and out of our quarters have been ineffective for months now so there’s really no need for us to be stumbling around trying to out-vague one another. Especially since I’m tired and you’re not any good at it any way.”

 

“I know,” Vazquez admitted, lips tugging up into a half-smile, head nodding in Khan’s direction. “His work, I assume – you’re brilliant at system infiltration and information retrieval, but one thing you’re _not_ is a code-writer. Whoever hacked the security feed left a trail behind them a mile wide, but the rootkit that was installed to subvert the system protocols was virtually undetectable even _with_ the breadcrumbs leading to it.”

 

“ _Virtually_ undetectable?” Khan inquired crisply, his annoyance at having apparently been found out clear. “Do you mean to say that it _has_ , in fact, been discovered?”

 

Vazquez’s smile turned wry. “Unofficially, yes,” he hedged, shrugging lightly. “Not that it matters much either way in the long run – found or not, it’s certainly not going anywhere.”

 

“Indeed? Whyever not?”

 

Oh, but he sounded proud of himself. She wasn’t the only one who heard it, either. Vazquez, a little of the old loathing shining through, shot Khan a less than friendly look. “Because you booby trapped it,” he snapped. “I’m assuming with a system wipe, though there’s really only one way to find out for sure.”

 

“I am impressed, Commander,” Khan drawled from behind her and she looked over just in time to see him lean back into the sofa cushions, leg crossed negligently and looking the absolute _picture_ of indolent condescension. “You appear to possess far greater skill than I was led to believe.”

 

Vazquez straightened even further, spine going rigid with affronted pride. “Given the likely source of your information,” and here he side-eyed Duval rather pointedly, “I can’t say that particularly surprises me.”

 

Bristling at the accusation implicit in his words, she rounded on him, glaring. “If you’re suggesting that I deliberately mislead him…”

 

“No,” Vazquez cut in, voice going sharp, “that’s not what I’m suggesting at all. I have no doubt that you told him the complete and total truth. Or at least, the complete and total truth as _you_ see it.”

 

“What the hell is _that_ supposed to mean, _the truth as I see it_?”

 

“You know exactly what it…”

 

“ _Enough_!” Khan’s voice, icy and unforgiving, lashed out from behind them, silencing them both, though they continued to glare at one another. “Commander, I assume that you had a purpose for this visit _beyond_ antagonizing Lieutenant Duval?”

 

Vazquez snapped his head around toward Khan, straight-backed and sour-faced. “I’m not trying to antagonize anyone.”

 

“Really?” Duval asked, seething. “Because it sure seems like you’re…”

 

“ _Rebecca_.”

 

Her name was a sharply spoken reprimand and she turned, narrowed gaze landing on Khan, annoyed at the interruption. “What?”

 

The look he gave her then was pointed, eloquent. “Goading him will accomplish nothing,” he said shortly. “This is hardly the time to make issue of old grievances.”

 

She didn’t like being corrected and her immediate inclination was to tell him what he could do with himself. But beneath her anger, the calmer, more rational part of herself could see the sense in what he was saying. After a brief internal struggle, she blew out a harsh breath, irritated but chastened, and gave a single, grudging nod. “Right,” she said flatly, attempting a smile, “you’re right.” She looked back to Vazquez and the smile shifted, became more of a grimace. “Sorry.”

 

There was nothing even remotely apologetic about either the word itself or the look in her eye as she spoke it, but at least she’d made the gesture. Annoying as it was, Khan was right – this wasn’t the time. Tomorrow was creeping closer with every passing second; she needed to play the part for just a little bit longer, no matter how it might chafe. Tamping down her ire with an efficiency born of long practice, she forced her face to relax into the blandly pleasant look that she generally reserved for her meetings with Marcus and extended her hand toward the chair nearest to where Vazquez was standing.

 

“Please, Commander…have a seat.”

 

At those words, Vazquez’s brow furrowed, studying her now as pensive focus replaced the resentment he’d been spitting at her only moments before. Her irritation, barely restrained as it was, reared up against the iron grip of her control but she ignored it, covering the momentary lapse with a wide, easy smile. “Would it help if I sat too?” She stepped over to the edge of the sofa, turned and settled herself down upon it before once again motioning for him to sit as well. “There. Better? Now, please…sit, Rafael.”

 

The Facility Commander’s entire carriage changed then; everything – face, shoulders, posture – fell and he breathed out a long, heavy sigh. “I’ve been trying to get you to call me that for years,” he said, sounding unutterably tired as he moved over to the proffered chair, dropping down into it with an uncharacteristic lack of grace. Meeting her eyes squarely across the even ground that now lay between them, his lips twitched upward into a truly wretched tragedy of a smile. “But if you’re going to say it that way, I’d rather you just went back to calling me Vazquez.”

 

Words – vicious, cutting _words_ – clawed at the back of her throat, desperate to be voiced, but Duval merely lifted her brows, assuming a look of surprise. “I was just trying to be friendly,” she said, voice light. “I’m sorry if I offended…”

 

“Stop that,” Vazquez ground out, his face pinched with some nameless emotion, his hands clenching into fists where they lay draped over the armrests. “Stop talking to me like that.”

 

“Like what?”

 

“Like I’m Marcus,” the Facility Commander snapped. “He may not be able to see through the act, but I always have – even when it’s not as obvious as right now. If I’m going to have a conversation with you, I want it to be with _you_ , not with the show you put on for everyone else’s sake.”

 

She stared at him, reading. Measuring. It felt like she’d already spent an eternity trying to figure out the man in front of her and frankly, she was getting really, really tired of the attempt. Breathing in deep through her nose and then letting it puff out through her mouth, she turned to look at Khan, brow arched in silent question.

 

He too was watching Vazquez and though there was, as always, a shadow of dislike hanging over his face, his expression was free of any active suspicion. Her assessment was confirmed when he flicked his eyes to hers and gave a single, short nod of approval which she returned in kind.

 

As one, they looked back to Vazquez, facing him as the united front they absolutely were.

 

Dropping the mask of dutiful obedience she had been yoked by for _so_ long, she stared across the room at Rafael Vazquez without guile for only the second time in the past year – though without the murderous outrage she’d only barely suppressed on the previous occasion. “You know, I’ve already spent far too much time today swallowing other people’s bullshit. I sure hope that whatever you’re about to say isn’t gonna wind up being more of the same, Vazquez, because I’ve gotta be honest, I’m not sure I’ve got the patience for it just now.”

 

Weirdly, it appeared that she had chosen exactly the right words to say because Vazquez visibly relaxed, the pinched look easing and the tension around his eyes softening. “Much better,” he acknowledged with a nod. “But not quite there yet.” He turned then, looking directly at Khan. “I was talking about you just as much as I was her.”

 

Khan’s chin came up, eyes focused, unblinking, on Vazquez. “Meaning, Commander?”

 

“ _Meaning_ ,” Vazquez continued, unfazed by the intensity of the other man’s gaze, “I know your name isn’t John Harrison.”

 

Duval stiffened as a shot of adrenaline surged through her veins, leaving her muscles twitching with latent energy. It was one thing to suspect that Vazquez knew more than he let on – it was another thing entirely to find out for certain. Beside her, even with nearly three feet of space separating them, she could feel Khan tense as well. From the corner of her eye, she could see the fingers resting on the empty cushion between them curl into the upholstery.

 

“Isn’t it?” His voice was a purr, deceptively soft and it sent a shiver down Duval’s spine.

 

She knew that tone – had been on the receiving end of it once upon a time, so very, very long ago now. Sitting up straighter, she flattened her feet on the floor, ready to move at any moment. She’d been saved all those months ago by the well-timed arrival of a security squad. Unfortunately for Vazquez, the only person at hand to save him was _her,_ and while she was reasonably confident that she could talk Khan down from killing him…she couldn’t guarantee that she would even _want_ to.

 

For his sake, she sincerely hoped that he knew enough about Khan to truly appreciate the precarious ground he was walking on and traversed it accordingly…

 

When she saw his knuckles go white from the sudden force of his grip on the arms of his chair, she felt a glimmer of hope that he did, indeed, know what he was doing. She had never given it much thought before, but apparently – if the smidgen of unease worming its way through her chest was any indication – she thought well enough of him that she would prefer not to see him dead.

 

Not to mention, they really couldn’t afford a death on either of their hands right the moment. Honestly, the man couldn’t have timed this little heart to heart any worse if he’d _tried_.

 

“Tell me, Facility Commander Rafael Esteban Ignacio Vazquez,” Khan’s voice went lower and quieter and ever more terrifying with every syllable he uttered of Vazquez’s impressive litany of names, “if I am not John Harrison,” and now he leaned forward, quick and hard, like a snake striking, eyes blazing and body vibrating with tenuously restrained violence, “then _who_ am I?”

 

Duval’s gaze shifted back and forth between the two men, perched now on the edge of her seat as well. Damn near holding her breath for fear of shattering the fragile tension that hung in the air between the two men, she watched the color drain from Vazquez’s face, save for twin spots of livid red splashed high across his cheeks.

 

 _Careful_ , she thought at him, palms flat against the sofa cushions on either side of her hips, ready to launch into action at a moment’s notice. _Be very…very…careful…_

_“Well?_ ”

 

The word was a rumble – a growl of sound, almost felt more than heard – and Duval could see Vazquez swallow hard, very visibly attempting to gather himself. “It doesn’t…it doesn’t matter _who_ you are,” he said, his voice commendably steady given the circumstances, “what matters…is _what_ you are.”

 

Khan leaned even further forward, elbows resting on his knees and every inch the caged predator staring down his potential prey. She remembered that look too…as well as what had come after. Eyeing the distance between Vazquez’s back and the wall behind his chair, she grimaced slightly, praying it didn’t actually come to that.

 

“And _what_ am I?”

 

Another hard swallow. A deep, only faintly trembling breath. “You’re the one man in the galaxy who might just want Alexander Marcus dead more than Ido.”

 

Well now… _that_ hadn’t been what she’d been expecting him to say at all.

 

The tension, so thick and cloying only moments before, dissipated almost immediately, tempered by the honest surprise suddenly etched all over Khan’s face. He turned to look at her – to look _to_ her – the question in _his_ eyes now.

 

Duval, wary but intrigued, slid herself sideways just enough that she could place her hand on Khan’s forearm, squeezing gently but firmly – a subtle exchange of the reigns, as it were. “Alright, Vazquez…you’ve had your moment – we’re both suitably shocked and amazed by that revelation. Now,” she arched a brow at him, so wholly unimpressed that it sucked every ounce of lingering tension out of the air, “clearly you have a _reason_ for sticking your neck out like this. How ‘bout you start telling us what it is.”

 

“I’d be happy to,” Vazquez said, clearly happy to be dealing with _her_ once more. He pulled in a deep, fortifying breath, held it for a moment, then released it. “I want to help you take down Alexander Marcus.”

 

Duval blinked. Frowned. Blinked again. “I’m sorry… _what?_ ”

 

“You heard me,” he insisted, surprisingly calm, considering. “I know you’re planning something – something big. Logically, I can only assume that eliminating Marcus would be part of your plans...and I want to help.”

 

She could feel Khan winding up to say something and she dug her nails into his arm, warning him away from whatever visceral reaction he’d had to Vazquez’s declaration. She didn’t want them to tell him _anything_ until she had a better grip on his motivations. “What makes you think we’re planning anything?”

 

Vazquez laughed at that, a choked scoff of sound that was more surprise than humor. “Because I have eyes and ears and the ability to correctly add two and two together? Because there’s a ship sitting in one of my cargo bays loaded with enough stockpiled weaponry to outfit a small army?” He paused, quirked a smile at them. “By the way, I put my signature on the transfer forms for those torpedoes that were picked up earlier this afternoon. I know you had already signed off on them, Duval…but I just figured, couldn’t hurt, right?”

 

It didn’t, in fact, hurt. If anything, Vazquez’s putting his name to the transport documentation _helped_ them – lent an extra air of legitimacy that would further smooth the road ahead of them as well as behind them.

 

But still…

 

She wasn’t thrilled with Vazquez knowing anything at all, let alone as much as he was suggesting that he did. Even if he did appear to be on their side.

 

Continuing to hold fast to Khan with a steadying grip, she licked her lips, trying to decide how best to approach this wholly unexpected development.

 

There really was no point in denying that they had plans, given what he had seen. However, that didn’t mean she needed to _confirm_ it either. _Time_ , she thought to herself brusquely, _for a little politicking._ “Before we go any further, I’m gonna need you to explain to me _why_ you want Marcus out of the picture.”

 

It was Vazquez’s turn to arch a brow, disbelief in the width of his gaze. “Seriously? You have to _ask_?”

 

“Yes,” she declared firmly. “In my experience, you’re not typically the bloodthirsty type and hearing you talk like you suddenly are makes me a little nervous. So if I – if _we_ – are going to trust you at all, then we need to be clear on where this is coming from.”

 

“Fair enough,” he allowed, dipping his head in acknowledgement. “I just wasn’t sure you would be interested in hearing about it. You certainly weren’t before.”

 

“Before?”

 

Vazquez smiled at her stiffly. “I tried to talk to you about this several months ago – I recall you were a bit… _distracted_ …at the time. Basically told me to shut up and leave you alone.”

 

Duval frowned, thinking. So many things had happened in the past months – so many conversations had, so many plans made – that it was difficult to pinpoint precisely _when_ he was talking about. “I don’t…”

 

“You were late for a meeting with Marcus,” he prompted, impatient.

 

“…and you came to get me,” she cut in, the right synapse firing at the right moment to bring the discussion in question up from the depths of her memory. “I remember. I remember that you were all wound up over some plans that the old man was making.”

 

Vazquez’s lips thinned, pressing together in a hard, unforgiving line. “No, what I _was_ , was deeply disturbed by something that Marcus had already done. And what he suggested he was going to _continue_ doing in the future. Christ, Duval…you make it sound like I was upset over nothing.”

 

Duval shrugged. “As far as I was concerned, you _were_. I believe I told you then, Marcus is _always_ making plans.”

 

“Yes, he is,” the Facility Commander agreed, thoroughly annoyed now. “Despite what you seem to think, I am fully aware of what Section 31 actually does. And _that’s_ why I had a problem with what Marcus was doing. Or did I miss the page in our Standard Operating Procedure that gives us leave to orchestrate a _war_ with an enemy planet?”

 

Leaning back – genuinely surprised by both that statement and the vehemence with which it was said – Duval’s brow furrowed. “War?”

 

“Yes,” Vazquez affirmed. “War. Specifically, war with the Klingon Empire.”

 

“I can’t say that really surprises me,” she admitted. “Marcus has always talked about war with the Klingon’s as an inevitability.” She frowned then, shaking her head. “But when you say _orchestrate_ …?”

 

“I mean, _orchestrate_ ,” he finished, as serious as she had ever heard him. “He isn’t just planning for an eventual war, Duval. He’s actively pursuing one.”

 

That…didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense at _all_.

 

“How the hell does he figure that’s gonna work? The only way it’s even remotely plausible is for him to drag the entire Federation along for the ride, but even then,” she stopped, scoffing loudly. “Even then that’s just…it’s _so_ stupid. It would never work. The Federation relies on diplomacy; they would _never_ engage in preemptive military action. There’s a reason that Starfleet avoids even the appearance of militarization. It’s a peacekeeping entity, start to finish – half the ranks would retire their commissions if that ever changed.”

 

“Pacifism has an astounding way of evolving,” Khan said quietly, fingers sliding over hers where they still lay upon his arm and drawing her attention back to him, “when those embracing it find themselves under attack by hostile forces. Recall Starfleet’s rally round the Vulcan cause.”

 

Duval frowned at him and pulled her arm away, shaking her head in denial. “That situation only reinforces my point. The Romulanswere the aggressors – and even after the attack on Vulcan, Starfleet Command sounded the retreat; they specifically ordered the remaining ships _not_ to pursue the Narada. The few who _did_ choose to stand and fight were forced to go rogue in order to do it.”

 

“But as you say,” Khan continued, “there _were_ those among the Starfleet ranks who were willing to fight for a cause they believed in.”

 

“Of course there are. There always will be,” she said, frustrated. “But only under a very specific set of circumstances. If the Klingons were to declare war on the Federation, that one would be one thing – they would be forced to fight back then. What _I’m_ saying is that they would never, _ever_ be the ones to _start_ anything.” She stilled, a terrible thought occurring to her and she spun back toward Vazquez. “And Marcus knows that, doesn’t he?”

 

“He does,” Vazquez affirmed grimly. “He very definitely does. He knows the Federation will never declare war on Qo’nos, so he’s doing anything and everything he can to goad Qo’nos into declaring war on the Federation – and he’s using Section 31 to do it.”

 

There was something in his voice, something hard and angry and _knowing_. It made Duval’s blood run cold. “Tell me what you know.”

 

As if he had been waiting for precisely that, Vazquez leaned forward in his chair, dark eyes burning as they met hers across the space between them. “There was an op – three Agents, deep cover; they were to establish themselves as Federation turncoats seeking to offload Starfleet equipment and supplies to the highest bidder.”

 

Duval pulled a face at that. “Purpose being?”

 

“Good question,” Vazquez said with a nod. “And one that I myself asked at the time – the paperwork came directly from Marcus’ office, but they were all three assigned to Io, so I had to sign off on it as their CO of record. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that it was none of my business and to just sign the damn papers. So I did.”

 

She certainly couldn’t fault him for that – God knew she’d shut up and done as she was told plenty of times over the years. But she wasn’t stupid. There was more to this story…and she was fairly certain that she wasn’t going to like any of it.

 

“A couple of months went by, but they never reported back,” Vazquez continued, his shoulder drooping. “The day I came to you was the day I learned what had happened to them.” His fists clenched, knuckles showing white. “Or should I say, what Marcus had done to them.”

 

Certainty flooded Duval’s veins, pooled like dread in her stomach. “It was a setup.”

 

“It was a setup,” Vazquez agreed, nodding his head at her stiffly. “They had been directed to make contact with a black market Klingon outfit operating out of an abandoned trading outpost just inside Klingon space. They laid the groundwork, made the connections and ultimately, secured the exchange. They were en route home when their ships propulsion systems – from the warp core on down – failed. They made one attempt at sending a transmission before they were intercepted by a squadron of Klingon fighters.” He stopped, swallowed hard. “All three were executed as Federation spies.”

 

For a long moment, the room was silent and Duval, who was glaring down at the floor beneath her feet, could feel the eyes of both men on her. The picture that Vazquez had painted was incomplete at best, but she had been around long enough – she knew _Marcus_ well enough – to fill in a lot of the holes.

 

She didn’t like what she saw. She didn’t like what she saw one little bit.

 

“Marcus had the ship sabotaged,” she said with absolute confidence, head still down.

 

“Yes.” Vazquez sounded as tired as she felt. “I’m reasonably certain that he was behind the tip off too, though I don’t even want to think about how that would even be possible.” He scoffed. “You should’ve heard him, Duval. He was so proud of himself – called it the best outcome yet. The only thing he was _disappointed_ about was that it still wasn’t quite _enough_. Said he’d need to figure out something even bigger for next time.”

 

Khan, who had been almost unnaturally silent through their exchange, sat forward abruptly, matching their edge-of-the-seat posture. “The best outcome yet? Then this was not the first time he sent Agents out to the slaughter?”  

 

“No, it’s not.” Vazquez’s expression turned even bleaker, his shoulders hunching a little bit more. “I…did a little digging after that.” He leveled his gaze on hers, hesitant but determined. “You were…distracted and I knew that I would need something really solid to get your attention.”

 

“You found something else.” She sat up, trying very hard not to lose her temper when he nodded hesitantly. “Something about _me_.”

 

Vazquez’s expression went flat. “Your last op before you were assigned to Io…”

 

“Capella IV,” she murmured, already not liking where this was going.

 

“Capella IV,” the Facility Commander agreed. “Your primary target – the head of that particular ring at the time…you remember him?”

 

“Toq Majjas,” she answered immediately, the fingers of her right hand seeking out her left arm and rubbing at it absently in remembered pain. “A Klingon by birth but discommendated and exiled from Qo’nos. It was through the few lingering connections he had on the Homeworld that his ring was able to establish a traffic flow into and out of the Empire.”

 

“Discommendated, yes,” Vazquez said, then leaned forward, eyes intent on her face. “But that doesn’t mean that his family wasn’t highly upset when news reached them that he’d been murdered by a Federation operative. His father in particular – General K’tal Majjas of Klingon High Command – has been baying for Starfleet blood ever since.”

 

Duval lowered her eyes to the table between them, jaw clenching as she replayed the memory of Marcus telling her during her last check-in prior to extraction that it would be best if she… _dealt…_ with Majjas before she pulled out, regardless of necessity. She had been reluctant to comply, not wanting to needlessly upset the proverbial apple cart when things had been going so perfectly to plan. Of course, circumstance had taken the decision out of her hands, but still…

 

“Son of a bitch,” she whispered, fists clenching in her lap. She wasn’t naive; she had always recognized that she was a pawn in a larger game, so _that_ part was nothing terribly shocking. But she had always imagined – even when she was doing her worst – that she was doing it… _for_ something. Something better.

 

Something _good_.

 

“God, I was stupid,” she muttered, angry with herself. “I was so _fucking_ stupid.”

 

“Not stupid,” Vazquez argued, “blind. We’ve all been blind – me more than most. You at least were in the field. I’ve been on the administrative side of things. I should have seen what was going on a long time ago, but I was too busy aiming for the next promotion,” his voice twisted then, going sharp with bitterness, “the next step _up_. I was so focused on it that I never bothered to _look_ …to _see_ …”

 

His voice trailed off and he shifted in his seat, discomfort suddenly radiating off him in waves. Duval, still mentally berating herself, frowned at him. “What is it?”

  

“There’s more.”

 

Never in her life had two simple words sounded quite so ominous.

 

“What?” That was from Khan, the word dark and roiling and deadly. “What _more_?”

 

Vazquez paled, looking very much like he was about to be sick. He breathed in and out, taking several deep, grounding breaths before swallowing, hard. “The job…” he began, voice barely above a whisper, “the job on Archanis…”

 

He didn’t need to say anything else. Because as soon as he said it, she knew. She _knew_.

 

Head dropping backwards so that she was looking straight up, Duval bit down hard on her back teeth, jaw clenching so tight that it _hurt_. “The job on Archanis was a setup,” she said to the ceiling, flat and furious; after a moment, she dropped her head to look at Vazquez again. “It was a setup and Allen was a plant.”

 

Shame stole over Vazquez’s face then and he had to look away, his silence all the confirmation that she needed. “She didn’t start out as a mole – from what I was able to find out, Marcus didn’t approach her until just before you left for Archanis. Promised her the moon, of course. Not that she got it – Marcus actually did lock her up.”

 

“Of course he did,” Duval said, voice thin and strained. “She didn’t do her job…and he’s not a forgiving man.”

 

“You were never meant to return.” Khan’s voice sounded from beside her, absolutely vibrating with caged fury. “Marcus meant for you to _die_.”

 

She blew out her breath in a huff, scrubbing a hand over her face as she tried very hard to just brush it all off. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

 

“I will kill him.”

 

They were more than just words – they were a vow. Duval turned her head to look at Khan who was staring straight ahead, perfect profile looking as if it had been carved from stone and his back almost painfully straight. His hands were clenched into fists where they rested against his legs and he was, she knew at once, as angry as she had ever seen him.

 

Precariously so.

 

“No,” she said emphatically, “you will not.”

 

His head snapped around, lightning-bright blue eyes slamming into hers. “ _Rebecca_ …”

 

“No,” she repeated, not even flinching beneath the tidal wave of his fury. “You. Will. Not. I won’t let you throw away everything we’ve worked for over something so stupid.”

 

Khan’s eyes darkened dangerously, but it was Vazquez who answered.

 

“ _Stupid_?” He shot her a look of disbelief when she turned to face him. “He tried to have you _killed_! He _did_ have God knows how many other Agents killed. Killing him isn’t _stupid_ , Duval…it’s _necessary_!”

 

“No,” she insisted, stubborn in her denial. “It’s not. Not for us, at least.”

 

The look of disbelief thickened. “Not for _you_? What the hell do you mean, _not for you_? You’re as much a part of this as anyone – _more_ even. The two of you have more reason to want him dead than just about anyone else in the Section!”

 

Well, he was certainly right about that. But the thing was…

 

It didn’t change anything – knowing what they now knew…this new understanding of just how dangerous Marcus really was, it really didn’t change anything at all. Even knowing what Marcus had done didn’t alter one teeny, tiny thing about either her intentions or their already finalized plans.

 

Did she _like_ finding out that she’d been even more of a tool on Marcus’ belt than she had ever realized? No, she didn’t. Did she _like_ finding out that the old son of a bitch had actively tried to have her _killed_? Definitely not. But again…it changed _nothing_ , save to make her long for the promised freedom of tomorrow even more fervently than she already had.

 

“Look, Vazquez, I agree with you that someone needs to stop Marcus – that things need to change,” she said, choosing her words with care. “But I’m telling you right now…we aren’t gonna be the ones to do it.”

 

The Facility Commander’s eyes went cold. “You’re not?”

 

Duval sighed, sick and tired of other people’s expectations. “No, we’re not,” she assured him, scooting forward to the very edge of the sofa cushion, back hunching as she leaned forward, forearms braced on her thighs and her eyes on his. “You want him dead, kill him yourself. We’ve got plans…and they certainly don’t involve getting ourselves mixed up in some half-assed assassination attempt.”

 

Vazquez stared at her, angry like she’d rarely seen him. “And what _plans_ might those be?”

 

“That,” Khan growled, all of his anger at Marcus focused now at Vazquez, “is none of your concern, Commander.”

 

“But…”

 

“You heard him, Vazquez,” Duval interrupted, not quite as abrupt as Khan had been, but damn close. “Our plans are ours. You want to incite change? Make your own. Stop looking to other people to fight your battles for you.”

 

Almost as if she had slapped him, Vazquez slumped backwards in his chair, all the fight leaking out of him. He was watching her, unblinking gaze slowly filling up with what looked very much like disappointment. “ _My_ battles? Duval…you’re as much a part of the Section as I am. This should _bother_ you. If not for the Section itself, then because you _know_ Marcus. If he’s already willing to sacrifice his Agents to his cause, how long do you think it’ll be until he decides that _anyone_ is fair game?”

 

She shook her head, firm. “Can’t help you.”

 

Oh, yes…it was _definitely_ disappointment. Vazquez was looking at her like he didn’t even know her. “It’s all about you, isn’t it? This thing you’re doing, _whatever_ it is…it’s all about _you_.”

 

The accusation was, she knew, meant to sting. He had meant for it to _hurt_. Apparently, he really _didn’t_ know her nearly as well as he’d thought he did.

 

“Again, not discussing it.” She shot him a warning look. “But if it is _all about me_ , can you blame me? I’ve spent nearly my entire life living by everybody else’s rules. Don’t I deserve to live by my own for once?”

 

Vazquez snorted out a laugh, shaking his head at her in disgust. “Right. That’s why you’re gonna run off and end up living by _his_ instead,” he jerked his head toward Khan. “ _Very_ empowering, Duval.”

 

“You would prefer, I suppose,” Khan drawled, brow arched and chin up, “that she live instead by _yours_?”

 

“Maybe I would,” Vazquez shot back at him, glaring now with unfettered hostility. “At least then, she would still be _her_. She would be making the _right_ choices, the _honorable_ choices rather than…”

 

“ _She_ would not be making _any_ choices,” Khan spat, cutting him off viciously. “ _You_ would be making them for her!”

 

“And you _don’t_?” Leaping up from his seat, Vazquez took a step toward Khan, hands clenched into fists at his sides. “Are you really going to pretend that you _aren’t_ the reason that she’s suddenly willing to turn her back on everyone and everything she’s ever known? That it’s not because of _you_ that she’s forgotten who she is?”

 

_What…?_

Duval’s head cocked sideways, brows knit and mouth hanging open as she tried to figure out what the _hell_ Vazquez was talking about. She was so caught up in being bewildered that it was only when Khan was suddenly _in_ the other man’s face that she realized that he had moved at all.

 

“Alexander Marcus may be out of my reach,” he snarled, toe to toe now with Vazquez and radiating such palpable menace that the other man actually faltered backwards a step, “but you are _not_ …”

 

_Oh…shit…_

“Stop it,” she shouted, shoving herself to her feet and vaulting over the coffee table; throwing herself between the two men, “both of you.” She put her back to Vazquez, planting both palms flat on Khan’s chest and giving him a shove that had far more to do with getting his attention than moving him. “Especially you,” she snapped at him, frowning. “You _know_ you can’t do this right now.”

 

Khan’s eyes never moved from Vazquez, piercing and molten and deadly. “I will not sit by and allow him to insult you, Rebecca.”

 

“Yeah? Me either,” she shoved him again, harder and he finally dropped his eyes to hers. The look she gave him then was more command than plea. “So back off and let _me_ handle it.”

 

She expected him to argue – to claim some antiquated manly right to defend his territory – but to her surprise, after a moment spent scouring her eyes with his, Khan nodded, once…and took a step backwards. Backing down, at _her_ command.

 

It was a heady feeling and she took that, breathed it in…and then turned it on Vazquez.

 

“You need to leave. Now.”

 

His face, so full of anger and all of it aimed directly at Khan, fell. His eyes shot to hers, a beseeching look in them. “Duval…” he paused, shook his head. “ _Rebecca_ …please think about what you’re doing. Don’t abandon your entire life…”

 

“I’m not abandoning _anything_ ,” she cut in, chin high, proud. “My life abandoned _me_ , Vazquez…in ways that you’ll never fully understand. So I think I’m well within my rights to find a new one. A _better_ one.” She crossed over to stand in front of him, eyes turning lethal. “And I swear to God, Rafael…if you lift _one finger_ to interfere with that, I’ll make _damn_ sure that I at least live long enough to see you dead.”

 

It was enough. _Finally_ …it was enough. She could see it in the resignation that settled over him like a thick, cloying cloud – she had made her point.

 

“Don’t worry,” he sighed, sounding sad and tired and just _done_ , “I won’t say a word.” He laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound at all. “Hell…I _can’t_ say a word even if I wanted to. I’ve run interference for you one too many times; I’d just end up incriminating myself if I outed you.”

 

He was right. She wished she could say that she felt bad about it, but she didn’t. After all, she’d never asked him for his help; what he’d done, he’d done of his own free will. But still, it didn’t hurt to try to calm the waters at least a little bit. “I’m sorry for that.”

 

“No, you’re not,” he said, waving away her apology. “But that’s all right – stupid as it sounds at this point, I’m not particularly sorry myself. At the risk of sounding truly pathetic…I’d still like to help you if I can. I’ll be gone tomorrow, of course, but if you need me for anything in the meantime…”

 

“I assure you,” Khan growled, stepping up behind her, his body a warm reassurance at her back, “we will not.”

 

Duval smiled stiffly, trying to soften the harshness of his refusal. “We appreciate the offer though.”

 

Vazquez scoffed, the sound as self-deprecating as any she’d ever heard. “Of course you do.” He stared at them for another long moment, then he sucked in a deep breath through his nose, back straightening and shoulders squaring…and then he walked away, putting them at his back and heading for the door with as much pride as he could muster. Just before he was about to walk through the door, he stopped, though he kept his back to them. “Wherever you’re going…whatever you’re doing,” he paused, sighed. “Good luck, Rebecca.”

 

Then he was gone.

 

 _Finally_.

 

Neither of them moved until the door hissed firmly shut behind him, leaving them alone once more. In the silence that followed, Duval slumped backwards, pressing herself to Khan’s steadying strength.

 

“Well,” she muttered, “ _that_ was fun.”

 

Khan pulled his hand from hers and then wrapped his arm around her waist, his other hand settling on her hip. He pressed his face into her hair. “I want to kill him, Rebecca,” he said quietly, breath warm as it whispered down her neck. “I want to watch the life drain from his eyes.”

 

“That’s not very nice,” she chided, letting her eyes slide closed. “What did Vazquez do to deserve that?”

 

“ _Not_ Vazquez.”

 

“Oh, right.” She reached down, laying her hand over his, letting their fingers entwine. “Marcus.” She sighed. “You know it would be stupid to even try.”

 

“That does not change the fact that I _want_ to,” he growled the words against her ear, low and adamant, before pressing a kiss to the skin just below. “You might have _died_ , Rebecca.”

 

“But I didn’t,” she said simply, shrugging the words away as she instinctively tipped her head even farther to the side, granting him better access. “And killing him now would end up hurting _us_ more than _him_. Now, if the opportunity ever presents itself in the _future_ …”

 

Khan hummed at that, dropping a kiss to the corner of her jaw. “We will kill him – together.”

 

Reveling in the feel of his lips sliding down the column of her throat and shivering when he nipped his way back up again, Duval smiled gently. “Aww…you’d do that for me? You’d _share_ that with me?”

 

He was walking her forwards now, large body urging hers forward toward the door of her room. His hands were wandering, sweeping fiery caresses up and down her body while his mouth continued to explore the already well-mapped landscape of her throat. The combination was wicked and wonderful and for a moment, she forgot that she had even asked the question.

 

But then, they had reached the door of her room – open now, thanks to him – and suddenly, she was twisted out of his arms, her back shoved roughly up against the doorframe as he loomed over her. The position – so poignant, so familiar – gave rise to a wave of longing so fierce that it nearly buckled her knees.

 

Khan, as if sensing her momentary weakness, pressed the length of his body against hers, supporting her almost casually as he lowered his mouth back to her ear. “I would share _everything_ with you,” he whispered, a tremor in his voice as he nuzzled her softly. “Everything that I have…everything that I am…”

 

Inhaling sharply, Duval turned her head, lips catching his in a dizzying kiss. Pulling away with a gasp after only a moment, she looked up at him, breathing hard. “ _Always_ ,” she declared, hands clutching at him almost desperately.

 

His eyes – already vibrant with feeling – blazed even brighter at that and he brought his hands up, cupping her face between his palms, almost vibrating with emotion. “ _Always._ ”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For everyone who has asked me about Khan's perspective...please check out my new one-shot series, Gladly Beyond Any Experience. There, I'll be posting Khan's side of certain chapters from SIHNT. Eventually, I may also throw some random cut scenes up there too!


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hello again! Once more, apologies for taking a while to get this out. Hopefully you all find that it was worth the wait!  
> Also, just wanted to let everyone know that I posted a companion story to this one a few weeks ago titled Gladly Beyond Any Experience. If you’ve ever wanted to see certain bits of the story from Khan’s perspective…you’ll want to check it out. I’ve only got one chapter up so far, but I plan to add a few more as time goes on. It won’t be comprehensive…I don’t plan on telling the entire story from his side of the aisle, but still…I figured some people might enjoy it!  
> Thanks, as always, to my sometimes-sweet and always-talented beta, Xaraphis. Without her constant prodding, this chapter would have been a lot longer in the making!

* * *

It was snowing when they landed, a light but steady fall that piled atop the needled boughs of the surrounding evergreens, pushing them down toward the ground where the fresh, fluttering powder drifted against the coarsely barked trunks.

 

Once they had secured their ship inside the seemingly crumbling old outbuilding that she had converted into a ‘hangar’ of sorts, Duval hauled on her coat and gloves and hurried for the doors. The building, which had once been a barn, sat on the curving, crescent of rocky shoreline that marked the western boundary of her hideaway. It was a lonely spot, nearly sixty miles removed from the nearest town and silent, but for the sighing of the wind and the occasional call of grosbeaks and waxwings on the hunt for rowan berries.

 

It was also a convenient spot, for just that very reason. Obtained by default while on a culling mission six years prior, it had previously belonged to a highly skilled – and particularly well paid – double agent, whose luck had finally run out on a long stretch of sandy beach several thousand miles south. She had stumbled across the details of his bolt hole while scouring his belongings for a particular piece of stolen technology.

 

The prototype she had handed over into Section keeping. But the bolt hole, she had kept to herself... _just in case_. Which, it turned out, had been a stroke of brilliance on her part. Because here it was…and here they were…

 

There was, she suspected, some dark kind of irony to the whole sordid situation, but she tried not to think about it. Tried not to picture the scene from that long-ago beach; the way wide, dark eyes had stared up at her defiantly even _after_ the light had gone out behind them...

 

_I’m not him_ , she reminded herself, _and this **will** work. It has to work… _

_Please, God…let it work…_

 

Actively shaking off those grim thoughts, Duval trudged out into the center of the open space that spilled from the edge of the barn at her back. Breathing deep, she turned a slow circle, letting her eyes drink in the stark beauty of what had, over the years, become one of her favorite spots on Earth. To her right, the partially frozen waters of Lake Inari glimmered dimly in the low-light of the Lapland midday, caught already in the long, chill grasp of winter. To her left, a thick, unbroken carpet of white that stretched from the tips of her boots to the thick trunks of evergreens that rose up out of the haze; looming sentinels, guarding her last bastion.

 

Things were going well, so far. In fact, things were going _perfect_. It was a beautiful day and they’d gotten this far and she had no reason to worry.

 

No reason at all.

 

A sharp, stinging gust of icy wind whipped past her, cutting straight through her heavy coat and bringing tears to her eyes. She smiled even as she sniffed against the burn, glad of the distraction. God…she _loved_ this place…loved the freedom that it represented and the small measure of peace that it always granted her.

 

She felt stronger just standing there. Stronger and calmer and _ready_.  

 

Her pack was thrust unceremoniously into her line of vision, straps swinging with the breeze. “Which way?”

 

The words were hard, abrupt. Duval turned…and very nearly laughed out loud at the sight that met her eyes.

 

Swathed in what looked to be every layer of clothing he owned – including, to her utter delight, the old black knit cap she’d found for him, pulled down low on his forehead – Khan stood there, tense and shivering. His shoulders were hunched and his expression was pinched and he just looked absolutely _miserable_. “What’s the matter?”

 

He grit his teeth – she could see it in the tic of his jaw. “It is _cold_ ,” he ground out and then gave her bag a shake. “Take this.”

 

Duval, screwing her lips up to keep from laughing, reached out and lifted her bag from his faintly trembling fingers. “It’s actually not all that cold today,” she offered, enjoying his discomfort more than she knew she should. “If I had to guess, I’d say it’s only just barely below freezing.”

 

“ _Only_?” He echoed the word with something like horror and she watched him flinch against another blast of cold air, arms snapping back to his sides as he hitched the bags that he was carrying higher on his shoulder. “Which _way_ , Rebecca?”

 

With a huff, she jerked her head toward the tree line. “About two hundred yards in…”

 

She hadn’t even gotten the words completely out before Khan was off, striding away from her with his head bent low against the wind. Snorting out a laugh, Duval tossed her backpack onto her own shoulders and jogged after him. When she drew even with him, she sucked in a deep breath of icy air, held it for a long moment, and then blew it out slowly through her mouth, reveling in the visible puff of her breath as it slipped past her lips.

 

“How can you _like_ this?”

 

She glanced over, finding Khan’s eyes latched on her, dark brows drawn together tight. “Are you kidding me?” Spying an outcropping of rock peeking above a snow drift just ahead, she let out a whoop of laughter and ran ahead, gloved fingers gripping the straps of her bag as she hopped from one windblown face to the next until she was nearly five feet in the air and looking down at her sour-faced companion. “How can you _not_ like it?”  

 

Khan stopped below, his face a picture of petulant discontent as he eyed her narrowly. “Remarkably easily,” he grumbled. “My feet are going numb, Rebecca.”

 

Duval rolled her eyes, familiar enough with his impressive biology to recognize the lie in his assertion. “Stop being dramatic – it’s not that cold, Khan. _I’m_ certainly fine.” She braced herself and then leapt down, landing with a thump, the snow crunching beneath her boots. “How can _you_ be freezing if _I’m_ fine? I’m not the genetic giant here.”

 

Instead of answering, Khan scoffed, lowered his head, and started for the trees once more. Duval, still fighting a grin, followed along behind him – his larger figure made an _outstanding_ windbreak, she found. Once they were inside the canopy built of intertwined Scots Pine and mountain birch, Duval stepped out from around Khan and took the lead, brushing her hand across his back and shoulder as she moved past him.

 

It was quieter under the trees; the howl of the wind reduced to a whimper. Duval glanced behind her, but found that Khan’s expression hadn’t lightened in the least. She sighed again. “I don’t know why you’re acting like this is any kind of surprise,” she called back to him, shaking her head. “You’ve known this was where we were going for weeks now.”

 

“Yes, well…I hardly expected _this_ , did I?” he snapped.

 

She couldn’t help it – she laughed. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure northern Finland was above the Arctic Circle even in _your_ day. How could you not have known it would be exactly like this?”

 

Another scoff. “There is knowing, and then there is _knowing_.” A pause, a sniff, a low growl of annoyance – his nose was running from the cold; so much for superior genetics. “You forget, Rebecca – my life on Earth was quite happily spent in far more temperate climes than _this_.”

 

Frowning, Duval turned them very slightly to the north. “I’m sorry…but isn’t Shimla in _northern_ India? It gets cold there, doesn’t it?”

 

“Indeed it does,” Khan agreed, sniffing again. “I had no choice but to bear it in my earlier years. But the moment I gained agency, I made it a point to decamp south every year at the very first _hint_ of colder weather.”

 

“So I’m guessing a snowball fight wouldn’t be in the cards for this evening, then?”

 

He tossed her a look that was more grimace than glare. “I should think not.”

 

Duval huffed, shaking her head in mock-disappointment. “You are absolutely no fun.”

 

“No, but I will be _warm_ – a trade-off that suits me immensely.”

 

They traded snarky comments as they walked and Duval enjoyed every second of it, allowing their easy banter to keep her mind off of more pressing issues for just a few minutes more. It wasn’t long before the simple pine cabin, built with interlocking squared logs, emerged from the forest in front of them. It was not large – a lofted bedroom and bath over an open living area – but it was comfortable and it served its purpose nicely.

 

There was a basement as well, which housed not only a cistern but also the small, dolamide generator that powered the house. Once Duval had that up and running, she had jogged up the narrow staircase to find that Khan had already worked out the intricacies of the heating unit built into one wall of the main living space. It lacked the quaint charm of a real, wood fire, but what it lacked in ambiance, it certainly made up for in practicality – much as she enjoyed the crackle and flare of flames licking at freshly chopped logs, she was happy not to have to worry about a too-revealing plume of smoke trailing up into the sky outside.

 

She walked across the room, past the tiny kitchenette with its even tinier appliances – the cabin was not fitted with a replicator, unfortunately – and stopped just beside the small dining table where they had piled their bags. Leaning one hip lightly against the nearest of the two ladder-back chairs that flanked the table, she smiled at the picture laid out before her. Khan, the heating unit adjusted to his liking, was sprawled on the floor before it, pulling off his boots with single-minded focus.

 

What daylight there was trickled in through the windows, haloing him as he set the boots aside and then leaned forward, palms out and fingers wiggling as he stuck his hands directly into the stream of warm air flowing from the heater. Entranced, Duval watched the way the pale, delicate beams played across his skin, so very different from the harsh wash of Io’s artificial brilliance.

 

He looked so…different here. So much… _softer_. The sunlight rounded his angles and blunted his edges and Duval had to clench her hands into fists to keep them from reaching out towards him.

 

If she touched him now, she wouldn’t want to stop – and they didn’t have time for _that_ right now. They had a timeline and she wasn’t about to deviate from it. They had one night allotted for this cabin – six to seven hours of which were meant to be spent sleeping. Khan might not need it, but she knew that she did, wanting to be as crisp as she could possibly be for the work that lay on the other side of the coming sunset.

 

She refused to take any chances.

 

It was at times like this, in the quiet _before_ , that she most relied upon her training, her experience. The silence that had settled between them, comfortable as it was, was a little _too_ silent. Too much silence, she knew well, could be dangerous. It was in the quiet – in the stillness – that fear lurked, just waiting for the right moment to strike.

 

Even now, she could hear it whispering to her; beckoning her closer. Reminding her of all the ways this could go wrong. Of how it could all fall to absolute pieces.

 

Of just how easily she could lose… _everything_ …

 

And it was so much _worse_ this time. So much _deeper_.

Everything that had come before this had always just been _work_. A job. Another challenge to be met. Another way to prove herself, to prove her worth.

 

But this...this was different. This actually meant something and it was utterly and completely _terrifying_. So terrifying, in fact, that she couldn’t just pretend that it wasn’t.

 

That it wouldn’t _gut_ her if Khan…

 

If something were to happen to…

 

“You are staring.”

 

His voice caught her off guard and she blinked, suddenly realizing that, as she had been looking at him, lost in her thoughts…so too was he looking right back at her. “Sorry,” she said, shaking off her momentary stupor. “I was…thinking.”

 

“One of your more dangerous habits,” he teased. He had stripped off the bulk of his layers and was sitting now in his customary cross-legged pose, socked feet tucked under and forearms resting on his knees. He watched her without a trace of the concerns that wore away at her insides, an easy grin curving across his face, pink in the cheeks now as the heat had begun to chase away the chill. “Tell me…what has put so serious a look on your face?”

 

She tipped her head to the side, eyeing him. He was so…calm. So _confident_. She couldn’t bear to mar that with her own deep-seated misgivings. The past year had granted him so little in the way of happiness – she sure as _hell_ wasn’t about to rob him of his good mood just because she couldn’t lay aside her worries.

 

Smiling faintly, she shook her head, turning away from him and toward the table as she did. “Oh, you know me,” she waved one hand, dismissive, “just borrowing trouble.” She reached for the bag nearest to her, tugging it toward her and pulling it open. “Don’t pay me any mind, Khan.”

 

He sighed and she could hear him shift positions, fabric rasping across the planked wooden floor. “You are worrying entirely too much, Rebecca,” he said, all amusement and fond exasperation. “Everything is going precisely to plan. The Vengeance departed on schedule – and in spectacularly successful fashion, I might add. We made our escape and subsequent journey without incident and now,” he lifted his hands in the air, palms up, in an encompassing gesture, “here we are.”

 

Rummaging through the open bag in front of her as neatly as she could, Duval’s smile turned wry and she only just managed not to shake her head. “That’s right,” she agreed, hoping the words hadn’t sounded quite as clipped to him as they had to her, “here we are.” She frowned, digging all the way down to the bottom of the bag. “I swear I packed my night vision gear under these ration packs…”

 

“No,” Khan corrected dryly. “I believe you’ll find what you want in the next bag over – under _those_ ration packs.”

 

Abandoning one bag for the next, she dug deep until her fingers wrapped around the small, silver case she had been looking for. Drawing it out, she flashed Khan a quick grin. “Thanks.”

 

There was another moment of silence during which Duval opened the case and began to inventory its contents.

 

_Wouldn’t hurt to double check the power levels too…_

“I still do not see,” Khan said once she had snapped the case back shut, “why you felt it necessary to pack quite so _many_ ration packs.”

 

They’d had this conversation before. Several times, in fact. Without looking at him, she put the case back where it had been and started off on the hunt for the next item on her mental checklist. “Nothing wrong with being prepared,” she said airily, pushing aside several palm beacons and pulling out one of the first aid kits she’d packed.

 

“I do not recall ever saying that there was.” A sigh – exasperation again, but less amused now. “However, it does seem rather a logistical nightmare. Do you truly intend for us to carry _all_ of that with us tomorrow?”

 

“Of course not,” she denied, shooting him a quick grin before looking down once more. “Most of this is staying here. You know…just in case.”

 

Another sigh – deeper this time and verging on real frustration. “That again…”

 

“Yes,” she agreed firmly, tucking the first aid kit away, “ _that_ again. I know you think it’s silly,” she closed the bag, zipping it up harder than absolutely necessary before lifting her eyes to his, jaw set with determination, “but I like to be proactive about these things. Better to have all of this stowed safely away here and not end up needing it, than to end up needing it…”

 

“…and not have it,” Khan finished for her, drawling the words. “Yes. _I know_. You’ve said as much before.” He pulled a face, head cocked to the side as he studied her. “You have grown extraordinarily tenacious in your practicality of late, Rebecca.”

 

“Yes, I have,” she affirmed, entirely resolute. “And you may as well get used to it, because I plan to stay that way for the foreseeable future.” She pressed her palms flat on the tabletop, leaning forward ever so slightly. “On that note – did you happen to notice the other ship docked in the barn?”

 

Khan’s eyes narrowed. “I did.”

 

“Good.” Duval stood straight, flashing him a tight smile. “Because that’s the ship we’re taking to Hornby tomorrow.”

 

After a moment of silence, Khan turned even further toward her, expression taut with wary hesitance. “Is it?”

 

“Yes, it is.” She lowered her head, showing him her determination. “And I’m not backing down on this one, so don’t bothering trying to argue it with me.”

 

“Indeed?”

 

Duval only just resisted rolling her eyes at him and his infuriatingly condescending questions-that-weren’t- _actually_ -questions. Funneling that spark of anger in with her frustration, she narrowed her eyes at him dangerously. “If things go to hell, the trans-warp beaming devices are set to bring us back here, right?”

 

“Correct.”

 

“So then it makes sense to leave ourselves with the fastest, stealthiest ship possible. My old ship doesn’t have nearly the capabilities that the new one does.”

 

Khan huffed, looking away from her. “You speak as if you anticipate failure.”

 

“No,” Duval argued, coolly ignoring the way her stomach twisted at his words. “I just don’t see why we shouldn’t be as prepared as possible if the worst happens. We spent weeks planning for the best possible outcome – why shouldn’t we spend at least a little bit of time planning for the alternative?”

 

He was silent for a long moment, staring straight ahead as his jaw clenched and unclenched. But then, he stopped…took a deep breath – a calming breath – and ran a hand through his hair, knocking it askew. “Upon reflection...I suppose there is, indeed, some sense in that.”

 

That last had been said grudgingly, but Duval let it slide, too happy to hear him admit it at all to quibble over tone. “There’s not just _some_ sense in it, Khan – it’s the only thing that makes any kind of sense at all. You can’t deny that.”

 

Another long moment of consideration – she didn’t look away; she _refused_ to look away – and then, he gave a short, decisive nod, reaching for his boots and pulling them on roughly. “Little as I like the cold,” he ground out as he pushed himself to his feet, “I am better able to cope with its effects than you are. I will go and begin shifting the appropriate gear over to your ship.”

 

Perking up at that, Duval’s eyes widened in surprise. “So you agree with me?”

 

Glancing up at her as he pulled his coat back on, Khan’s expression was bland. “No,” he bit out as he worked the fastenings closed. “I find this change both tedious and entirely unnecessary. However…”

 

“I can set it all up,” Duval cut in, frowning at the hard edge in his voice. “I didn’t ask you to…”

 

“ _However_ ,” Khan repeated, talking over her and scowling once more, “as _you_ find it to be neither, I will bow to your wishes.” He turned sharply on his heel and stalked over toward the door. He pulled it open and then spun around, eyes finding hers, almost glowing in the half-light. “I will bow to your wishes,” he repeated, steadfast, “as you have so often bowed to mine.”

 

She frowned deeper, not at all liking the implications of _that_. “That isn’t…” she huffed, shaking her head at him. “This isn’t a competition, Khan. When have I _ever_ demanded that kind of tit for tat?”

 

“You never have,” he said, gripping the door handle hard, “and you never will. As such, _I_ will demand it for you.” He turned away then, an entirely different kind of tension in him now. “And when this is finished and we have succeeded, I will see that you need never bow to anyone ever again.”

 

With that rather ambiguously spectacular statement, he jerked the door shut, leaving a silence in his wake that fell like a hammer on her ears. Heart galloping wildly in her chest, Duval leaned forward on her hands again, head dropping until her chin rested against her chest. There was still so much they hadn’t said to one another – so much that she knew they probably _should_ say.

 

But she just…she _couldn’t_. Not yet.

 

She wasn’t ready, as ridiculous as that sounded. Not because she wasn’t sure of her feelings and not because she didn’t _want_ him to know.

 

She just didn’t know _how_.

 

She wasn’t _good_ at love – her experience with Khan alone had showed that over and over and over again in painfully explicit detail – and she was quietly certain that any attempts to actually say the words were destined to end in mortification and misery.  

 

_But what if_ , her mind whispered to her, each word a lump of dread, settling heavily in her belly, _what if you fail. What if something **happens** and you never say it? What if…?_

“I will,” she whispered, refusing to give in. “I’ll say it. I’ll tell him. I _will_.”

_But what if you **don’t**?  What if it all goes to hell and you never get a chance to **tell** him_ _how much you…_

With a growl, Duval raised her palm and smacked it down, hard on the table, dislodging several items that she’d had perched precariously on the edge of the bag nearest to her. They fell, rapping her soundly across the knuckles and she jerked her hand back, hissing at the slight stab of pain. Looking down – _glaring_ , more like – she froze at the sight of the old composition style notebook that lay so innocently on the tabletop where her fingers had just been.

 

She had no illusions. If something _did_ go wrong, her chances were…

 

Well…they weren’t great.

 

And she realized then, as she stared down at that notebook, that she wanted him to know. More than that, if something _did_ happen to her before she figured out how to say it, he would _need_ to know.

 

Inspiration, swift and overwhelming, struck her and she reached out, snatching the notebook up, staring at the front cover with far more intent than the inventory checklist contained within it deserved. Looking up at the closed door, and then back down at the notebook again, she knew what she needed to do.

 

It wouldn’t take long – she wasn’t a speech-maker, especially not on paper – and when she was finished, she would go out and help him with the switch like none of this had ever happened.

 

Jerking one of the chairs out from the table, she dropped down onto it, fingers reaching out and dragging her personal pack over toward her. Dipping into the large outside pocket, she drew out a raggedly sharpened pencil and then began flipping through pages until she found a crisp, blank sheet of white staring up at her from below.

 

Before she could talk herself out of it, she leaned over, put the pencil to the paper…and began to write.

 

* * *

 

Khan was already in position when they landed at Hornby, tucked away out of sight in the largest of the sub-floor storage compartments. Not that they expected that anyone would actually search the ship – according to what remote surveillance they had been able to manage, the security standards for the facility were quite appallingly lax.

 

Especially compared to what they had been before.

 

Few Section facilities had ever functioned under such stringent defensive protocols as Hornby Bay had six months prior. Nearly six _dozen_ security personnel had been quartered there at that time, in addition to a medical staff of over fifty, topped off with almost twenty field-trained Agents and Section Officers. It had gone far beyond the surplus of personnel as well, with the utilization of all kinds of experimental and highly unorthodox technological defense systems. Most notable of which, of course, was the experimental magnetic shielding that had proven so highly inconvenient to them. Far _less_ inconvenient, however, was the state-of-the-art anesthesia gas delivery system that had been retrofit into the pre-existing duct work. Marcus had well and truly gone overboard in his determination to secure his much vaunted _upper-hand_.

 

Unfortunately for him, his arrogance far outstripped his vigilance.

 

Because while the technological safeguards remained in place, the personnel did not. From what they had been able to tell, the staff numbers had steadily fallen off as Marcus became more and more convinced of Khan’s ineffectiveness. At present, the Hornby facility housed a crew compliment of thirty-eight, over half of which were medical staff. Only two Section Officers remained, including the CO, with a single security team making up the rest.

 

Thirty-eight. Not necessarily the most manageable number for two people – though she rather thought they would have a better chance than most – but the disparity would be easy enough to manage. All of that _far less inconvenient_ anesthesia gas tucked away above the ceilings would see to that.

 

The activation of that particular system would be Khan’s job. Hers would be slightly more delicate, maneuvering past the largest remaining road block in their plan – getting the torpedoes back to Io. She certainly couldn’t call in an order like that herself and especially not _from_ Hornby. It would be suspect at best and ruinous at worst.

 

No, far better, they had agreed, for the order to go through the proper channels, mitigating suspicions and giving them the time they needed to do everything that needed doing.

 

To that end, Duval had put in a call to Hornby’s current Commanding Officer regarding their ‘misdirected’ shipment just before they took their leave of her little lakeside retreat that morning. There had been an edge of wariness to her conversation with the sweet-faced – but sharp-eyed – CO at first, which hadn’t surprised her. Hornby, by its very nature, didn’t see much traffic, so even the slightest departure from normal was bound to be approached with caution. Duval, thinking fast, had put on a show of harried near-panic as she spun a shaky – if rambling – tale for the other woman’s benefit, complete with desperate beseeching and countless mea culpa’s.

 

Apparently, the act had struck a chord because the wariness in the CO’s eyes had faded swiftly, replaced by a look of such intense relief that Duval knew they were in. When they had signed off, she was in possession of not only the required landing clearances, but also a promise of full cooperation upon her arrival.

 

She glanced up at the monitor, noting the three figures walking up to the landing pad. At the front, slightly ahead of the other two – who Duval guessed to be Security – was Lieutenant-Commander Kekoa Okushima herself. Hopefully, that promise was one that the other woman fully intended to keep. It would make everything so much easier if she did.  

 

“You have your mask?”

 

Duval, frowning, flicked her head to the side to see Khan watching her, one arm holding up the floor-grate that he was _supposed_ to be hiding beneath. “The point is for you to stay out of _sight_ ,” she hissed, glancing over to check that the greeting party hadn’t decided to become a boarding party instead.

 

“All the more reason for you to answer me quickly then, is it not?” His voice was low, nearly a whisper, but somehow still managed to carry enough authority to make her bristle. “Do…you…have…your mask?”

 

Narrowing her eyes at him, she reached into one of the deep pockets of her coat, pulling out the gas mask she had stowed there before they left the cabin. “Right here,” she said, brandishing it with a shake of her wrist before shoving it back where it had been.

 

“Your communicator?”

 

She gave him a _look_. “In the other pocket,” she assured, half-amused, half-annoyed.

 

“And you remember the signal?”

 

“ _Yes_ ,” she huffed, crossing the space between them and dropping to one knee, placing her hand over his where it held up the grate. “Relax, would you? This isn’t exactly my first time.”

 

“Yes, but…”

 

“No, buts,” she cut in. “I know the plan, Khan – intimately. We’ve been over it a hundred times.” She gave his hand one last squeeze before standing up again, quicksilver grin lighting up her face as she walked backwards away from him. “Now stop worrying and get yourself back under there. This shouldn’t take long, so be ready.”

 

“Rebecca…”

 

She spun around, putting him at her back as she hurried toward the door. He had been second guessing the decision for her to go in alone all morning long, and it was _grating_. It sparked her temper and pulled at her nerves and most of all, it reminded her why she had always preferred to work alone. She had always been very, very good at compartmentalizing; at putting away her fears and focusing instead on the work that needed doing. Khan’s wariness, understandable as it may have been, was everything that she absolutely did _not_ need.

 

Better to just walk away, she thought as she activated the outer door and watched the stairs descend to the snow-covered ground outside, than to stand there and let him talk her into an extraordinarily inconvenient attack of nerves. He would see soon enough just how much he _didn’t_ have to micro-manage her. Until then, he was just going to have to deal with it.      

 

Right now, she had a job to do.

 

The second she felt the shock of cold burst across the exposed skin of her face, she flipped the switch, shifting almost instantly from cool and collected to anxious and agitated. Speeding down the steps, she started toward the trio positioned at the edge of the pad, the looming bulk of one of the main buildings – Warehouse 1, Duval knew – at their backs.

 

She ignored the two at the rear, focusing with every assumed ounce of desperation that she could muster on the woman at the front. “Lieutenant-Commander Okushima,” she said tightly, snapping out a sharp – _tense_ – salute. “Thank you _so_ much for having me here.”

 

“Lieutenant Duval,” the other woman welcomed with a smile that was almost disarmingly friendly. All of the relief that Duval had seen in those dark eyes over the com earlier was still there, only _more_ intense now as the CO offered her hand in greeting, bypassing the more formal return salute, “it’s a pleasure to have you here.” She shook her head, blowing out a sigh of that same relief. “And I really mean that, you have no idea how happy I am that you’re here.”

 

Accepting the handshake without hesitation, Duval smiled thinly at the other woman. Consciously maintaining the air of anxiety that she had presented in their previous exchange – urgency would get them inside faster, and the sooner they were inside, the sooner Khan could sneak off the ship and get to work – Duval gripped tight and shook _fast_. “You have no idea how happy I am to _be_ here. And let me just say again how sorry I am that this mix up happened in the first place. My Commander _did_ tell me to double check the shipping docket, but we’ve been so busy that I just _completely_ forgot. If he finds out about this, he’ll _kill_ me.”

 

Okushima’s expression shifted, filling with sudden, swift…and oddly _vicious_ …sympathy. “You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself,” she scolded almost angrily, deep amber eyes alight with understanding. “It was just an oversight – happens to everyone. Including, I don’t doubt, to your Commander.” Her expression hardened and her grip on Duval’s hand clamped tight. “Though it never ceases to amaze me how much harder we have to work to make up for even the simplest error.”

 

Duval held her grip, though her eyes narrowed slightly, allowing her confusion to show. “I’m sorry?”

 

“Women,” Okushima clarified. “It’s the 23rd century and we _still_ have to work twice as hard as men for the same recognition.”

 

 Oh.

 

_Oh._

That was…well…it was just ridiculously helpful, wasn’t it? Somewhere along the line, Lieutenant-Commander Okushima had been screwed over by a CO of her own. A _male_ CO of her own.

 

Duval had never been more aware of the concept of sheer dumb _luck_ as she was at that very moment. She had inadvertently painted precisely the right picture for precisely the right audience. Now, it was time to play up just how _awful_ Commander John Harrison was…  

 

“Well isn’t that just the God’s honest truth,” she griped, pulling her hand back from Okushima’s grip. “It wasn’t even supposed to _be_ my job to check the docket,” she rolled her eyes, lips pulling into a tight pout. “But that’s the way it works, isn’t it? Anything they can pawn off on us, they _do_ pawn off on us, right?”

 

“I couldn’t agree more,” Okushima replied hotly. “Everyone acts like things have changed, like things are _different_ now than they were a hundred years ago, but they’re not. Honestly, it would serve your Commander right if this whole thing fell on his head, right where it belongs!”

 

Wincing inwardly, Duval mentally hauled back on the reigns. _Let’s not go throwing the baby out with the bath water, shall we?_

“Nice as that would be, you know how it goes,” she said, snapping out the words and shaking her head. “It’ll never fall on him. It’ll be on me…and quite frankly, with the year I’ve had, I just can’t afford that.”

 

It was a little bit of a gamble, booking on the fact that her reputation had preceded her – but based on the look Okushima gave her, it was one that paid off.

 

“I hear you,” she said, sighing the words. “Even stuck out here in the middle of nowhere, people talk.”

 

“People talk everywhere,” Duval groused, allowing a little bit of her own, honest bitterness to leak through. “There’re few things people enjoy doing more than _talk_.” Heaving a deep, cleansing breath, she plastered a patently forced smile on her face. “But that’s neither here nor there. Only thing I can do now is cover my ass and hope for the best!”

 

“Very true,” the CO agreed, giving her a nod and a conciliatory pat on the back before stepping to the side and gesturing toward the building just behind them. “So how about we get this sorted out? Come on inside out of the cold. We’ll step into my office and order the pickup – and don’t worry, I went through Section training with one of the transport dispatchers. She’ll push it through ASAP if I ask her to with no questions asked.”

 

They had begun walking as she spoke and Duval shot her a grateful look that wasn’t entirely feigned. “I’m not gonna lie – that would be fantastic. The Commander is off-base at present, so I’d love to get this all wrapped up before he gets back. The sooner both that shipment and myself are back on our way to Io, the better I’ll feel.” She paused, grimaced. “I imagine it must’ve been a real headache for you when that transport showed up out of the blue yesterday. Suddenly finding yourself stuck with a whole ship-full of ‘top-secret’ crates that you weren’t expecting couldn’t have been fun.”

 

“Oh, you have no idea,” Okushima replied, walking through the door that had opened ahead of them and into Building 1. “I was _dreading_ having to call it in to Command. I don’t even want to _think_ about all the red tape I’d have had to wade through to get this fixed from my end.”

 

“Well I’m glad I got to you before you reported it.” Duval shook her head as she followed the other woman inside. “Like I said…it’s been a hell of a year. This little snafu got back to my superiors and I’d be _done_.”

 

The CO continued down the hall with Duval following close on her heels. “That’s just sad,” she said, almost growling the words. “Obviously I’ve heard of you – just about everyone has. And before the past few months, it’s never been anything but good. What does it say about our Command system that _one_ mistake damns you like _this_?”

 

Duval snorted – and not out of agreement, though she tried very hard to make it sound that way. This woman had clearly never been in the field. If she had been, she would understand how much trouble even the _tiniest_ fuck up could produce. But now was neither the time nor the place to set her straight…especially when all that misplaced anger she was carrying was proving so very, very helpful. “Yeah, I’ve learned real quick just how little past glory counts for in the face of present…unpleasantness. I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t killed my faith in the system _just_ a tad.”

 

Well. That much was true, at least. Not quite in the way Okushima would take it, but still…true.

 

“That’s where we’re different then,” Okushima scoffed, glancing sideways at Duval with a wry grin. “I’ve never had any faith in the system.”

 

They came to a stop then, just outside a door at the far end of the hall. The CO turned, giving a sharp order to the two security guards, sending them back to their posts. Once they had walked away, disappearing through a door further back down the hallway, Okushima turned back to her, a conspiratorial glint in her eye. “They’re harmless…but no need to have prying ears butting in on the rest of this conversation, I think.”

 

_Better and better._

Duval grinned at that. Widely.

 

“Perfect. The less people I have to worry about getting involved, the better.”

 

Okushima smiled back and then slapped her hand down on the control pad outside her office door – handprint scanner, Duval noted. _Interesting_.

 

“Bioscans just to get into your office?” Duval cocked a brow, feigning surprise. “That seems like some serious overkill.”

 

“Everything here is, unfortunately,” the CO responded, sounding entirely put out. “The only thing you _don’t_ have to go through a bioscan for here is the damn bathroom.”

 

Following her inside her sparsely furnished and entirely utilitarian office – standard Section fare all around – Duval moved to one of the two chairs that Okushima had motioned her toward as she rounded the desk. “Like I said, seems like overkill at a facility like this. We don’t even have security like that on Io.”

 

The Lieutenant-Commander shrugged as she took her seat, fingers already flying over the comm controls. “We do some… _interesting_ research out here. Can’t really say more than that,” she paused, finger hovering over the final button that would connect the call and gave Duval an apologetic grimace. “Classified. You understand.”

 

“Absolutely, I do,” Duval acknowledged, impressed to see that the woman possessed at least _some_ shred of self-preservation. How someone like her had ever gotten Marcus’ approval for a position like _this_ was beyond her. Either Okushima sang an entirely different song to Command…or Marcus’ arrogance had blinded him to yet another potential weak spot.

 

To be honest, either explanation was just as likely as the other.

 

The call itself didn’t take long and the issue was settled with even less fuss than Duval had dared dream it could be. As Okushima had said, her friend put the order through without question or comment, signing off with a wink that would have infuriated Duval a year ago. But now…now she found herself positively giddy over the malaise that seemed to have infected the Section from the bottom up.

 

Once it was finished and the pick-up had been scheduled for 1600 – giving them five hours to work with – Duval sat back in her chair, feeling enormously relieved. “Well then,” she said, hand slipping down into her pocket, fingers closing around the communicator stowed there, “there’s that taken care of. Really, I don’t think I can thank you enough for all of your help, Lieutenant-Commander.”

 

“Please,” the other woman said, waving her hand dismissively, “I’ve never been one for all that rank-and-file bs. Call me Kekoa.”

 

Duval gave a nod. “Right then. Thank you, Kekoa. You’ve been an absolute Godsend.” She depressed the side button on her newly modified – by Khan, of course – communicator, giving two long clicks followed by one short and then three more long. It was called Morse code, apparently – something she vaguely recalled learning about at the Academy once upon a time. Dots and dashes in place of letters, these particular ones spelling out G…O.

 

Go. 

 

She repeated the message, as agreed, twice more at ten second intervals while continuing to smile and chat with the woman on the other side of the desk. Then, she simply wrapped her fingers around the device – now programmed to vibrate rather than trill – and waited for the return signal.

 

A return signal that came for the first time, just as the display built into Okushima’s desk lit up like a Christmas tree, warning signals flashing all over the place. The CO frowned in confusion, staring down at the indicators like she’d never seen them before.

 

“What the…”

 

The second signal came just ahead of the blaring of the main alarm, screaming the warning out through the building. Duval slipped her free hand into her other pocket, drawing out her gas mask. The movement caught Okushima’s eye and she drew back, looking very much like she’d been slapped.

 

“You…”

 

“Like I said,” Duval cut her off, feeling the third and final vibration and immediately pulling her hand off of her communicator and out of her pocket as she gave the CO a sunny smile, “a real Godsend.”

 

She pulled the gas mask over her face just as the first rush of gas came spilling into the room through the wide open air ducts which had previously been gushing heat.

 

“You fucking _liar_ ,” Okushima roared, leaping up from her chair and attempting to throw herself around the desk and toward the door.

                                                                                                                                                                        

Duval, moving quickly, kicked out with one booted foot, sending the empty chair beside her flying toward the panicked CO. It hit Okushima hard, sending her sideways into the wall. On her feet now, Duval hurried over to her crumpled form, knocking the chair out of the way. “Sorry, sweetheart,” she said, the words muffled slightly by the mask covering her nose and mouth, “but I need to keep you handy.” She grinned behind the mask, grabbing the other woman’s wrist and giving it a shake. “If you know what I mean.”

 

“ _Fuck_ you, you bi…”

 

It was all Okushima managed to get out before the gas did its job and her eyes slid shut, mouth gaping open on the unfinished insult. Duval dropped her hand, huffing indignantly. “Some people just don’t appreciate a good pun.” She stood up, digging her communicator out of her pocket and flicking it open. “All clear in the CO’s office,” she announced, knocking the overturned chair out of her way before moving to the door. “How’s the rest of the building looking?”

 

“I’ve already secured six,” came Khan’s voice over the speaker. “Along with the twenty-three that were in Warehouse 2.”

 

“I’ve got one here,” Duval returned, eyeing Okushima’s unconscious figure. “Which brings us to an even thirty. Eight more to go.”

 

“I shall find them in short order,” Khan assured, and she could hear the sound of a door opening, both over the communicator and in the corridor beyond. “Can you manage the Commander on your own?”

 

It occurred to her to be insulted by the question. But then it also occurred to her that Khan even asking the question was indicative of his belief in her abilities – he wouldn’t have bothered asking if he honestly thought that she couldn’t. “Yeah,” she answered back, “I’ve got her. Apparently there’s bio-signature readers all over the facility that _weren’t_ included in any of the security work-ups we found.”

 

“Indeed?” The creak of another door. “Will that be a problem? Three more, by the way.”

 

“Give me a second and I’ll come help you,” she said, kneeling down in front of Okushima once again. “And no, it won’t be a problem. The CO’s handprint should get us anywhere we need to go.”

 

“Excellent. Are you the noise I hear in the room at the end of the corridor?”

 

“That would be me and I’m heading your way now.” She snicked the communicator shut and tucked it back into her pocket. “All right now, Kekoa,” she grabbed the unconscious woman beneath the arms, hands locking together just beneath her breasts as she dragged her toward the door which slid open ahead of her, “let’s go join your crew.”

 

* * *

 

Twenty minutes later, the entire Hornby Bay personnel roster had been securely stowed within several of the various storage lockers located throughout the two primary buildings. Duval, in a fit of pure, unadulterated conscience, had insisted that they leave enough provisions in each make-shift prison for at least five days – longer, even, than she suspected they might need it. Khan, though clearly chomping at the bit to begin their _real_ task, had merely nodded his head and helped her quickly gather up the requisite number of ration-packs, delivering those for the Warehouse 1 captives while Duval shoved the rest into two bags she had liberated from one of the rooms they had cleared.

 

The only slight niggle arose over the fate of Lieutenant-Commander Okushima. Khan, in a move that was so predictably – if slightly disturbingly – _him_ , stood over the prone form of the Hornby CO and asked her if she happened to have brought a knife. She hadn’t, unfortunately. She immediately moved to go find one, not even questioning the request, when suddenly _something_ , some small instinctive reflex, stopped her in her tracks.

 

“What exactly do you need a knife for?”

Khan looked up at her, his brow arched in mild amusement. “You said yourself that we would need the Commanding Officer’s hand print.”

 

Duval started shaking her head before he had even finished talking, realization hitting her like a ton of bricks. “No. Absolutely not. We are not cutting that poor woman’s hand off, Khan.”

 

His amusement dropped into a frown. “Whyever not? It is, by far, the most practical…”

 

“When this is done, she’s going to have enough shit to deal with as it is without throwing _that_ into the bargain.”

 

“Rebecca…”

 

“No, Khan! She was very nice and very helpful and we aren’t gonna physically maimher on top of everything else.” She huffed then, eyeing him with exasperation. “I think we owe her _that_ much at the very least.”

He grumbled at that, but let it go, recognizing that they had far more important things to worry about.

 

He passed Duval one of the portable transwarp beaming devices without another word of complaint and she smiled her thanks at him as she slipped it over her head, slinging the strap across one shoulder and settling the device itself across her back. It was slightly ungainly, but workable, and she found that she could maneuver well enough as she hauled up the bags with the rest of the ration-packs as well. Khan, the other device similarly strapped to _his_ back, shouldered a now thoroughly restrained Okushima and then they started for the connecting corridors that would take them to Warehouse 3 – their final destination.

 

On the walk over, it occurred to Duval that she hadn’t even _considered_ the security feeds and she cursed her own carelessness. “You set the loop, right?”

 

From ahead of her, she heard Khan give a huff of irritation. “If you are referring to the security feed, yes, of _course_ I set it. It is on a two-hour loop that will slowly degrade over the next forty-eight hours until it finally cuts back to a live feed.” He turned his head, shooting her a _look_ over the shoulder that Lieutenant-Commander Okushima _wasn’t_ draped over. “ _Really_ , Rebecca…as if I would forget so vital a detail.”

 

Duval fighting a grin, shrugged negligently. “Please. Like you wouldn’t have asked _me_ if the tables were turned.”

 

He said nothing to that. But then, he didn’t need to. They both knew perfectly well that he would have. Of course, they both also knew perfectly well that, if the tables _were_ turned, she’d have answered him just as snappily.

 

Maybe worse, if she was being completely honest.

 

In some ways, they really were very much alike.

 

Now, they were just passing into the final connecting corridor between Warehouse 2 and 3 – after a quick side trip to drop off the rest of the ration-packs – and Khan’s pace quickened; so much so that Duval nearly had to jog to keep up with him. He had gone silent as well, the chatter they had tossed back and forth at one another tapering off a little more the closer they came to their goal.

 

One last door stood in their way now, a glowing bioscan device attached to the wall beside it. Duval slipped around Khan, who had wordlessly shifted the unconscious CO into a more convenient position, and took the Lieutenant-Commanders limp hand into her own before fitting it precisely onto the scanner. A moment later, the display went green and the door slid open as all the overheads in the room beyond burst into life. Bright, white light spilled down from above, cascading over rows upon rows of perfectly aligned cryo-tubes that Duval had only ever seen through the grainy glare of a hacked security feed.

 

Khan, who had taken two stuttering steps into the wide open space of the room beyond the door, was frozen in place now, staring out over the tubes – over _his people_ – with a look of complete and utter blankness. Duval, standing at his side with her eyes on _him_ rather than _them_ , knew what that meant; knew how _much_ that meant. She had learned, long ago, that, except in _very_ specific circumstances, Khan showed the least, when he felt the most.

 

And right now, he was feeling _a lot_.

 

_Too much_ , to be honest. She hated to push now, when the fruition of all of his pain and hope and guilt and effort lay spread out before him, but they simply didn’t have time for him to bask in the moment. Not yet.

 

Soon. But not yet.

 

She reached out, fingertips just grazing the sharp line of his jaw, drawing his face toward her with surprisingly little resistance on his part. There were tears in his eyes, but she ignored them – stored the pang in her heart away for later – and gave him an uncompromising look. “I know,” she said simply, nodding her head at him. “Khan… _I know_. But you can’t do this now. You know you can’t.”

 

His eyes locked on hers, an almost desperate glint in them and after a moment, he swallowed hard, jaw clenched tight. “Yes,” he rasped, “I know, but…” he closed his eyes then, leaning into her touch as two loosed tears rolled down his face. “ _Thank you_ , Rebecca.”

 

It wasn’t just about the reminder – she could hear it in the way the words trembled past his lips. It was bigger than that. So much bigger and so much more _important_. But if they didn’t have time for him to bask, they certainly didn’t have time for _this_ either…

 

She stroked her fingers across his lowered cheek once, as lovingly as she knew how, but then drew her hand away, meeting his eyes when they popped open in protest. “Thank me when we’re done,” she said firmly, moving away from him and nodding toward the room at large. “Right now, let’s get to work.”

 

He stared at her fiercely for one long – almost _suspended_ – moment, and then he nodded once, just as fiercely and twice as determined. “Yes. Let’s get to work.”

 

It was more of the same from there out. They had a plan…they followed the plan…and the plan… _worked_. It worked as well as either of them could have hoped for and in some cases, even better.

 

The torpedoes, they quickly discovered, had been stored in Warehouse 4, which – like all of the main buildings – was connected to those on either side of it by a wide corridor. The proximity alone was enough to speed up the process considerably, but that wide connecting corridor proved even more beneficial. Especially when they discovered that the heavy equipment that they had assumed would be present, _was_ , in fact, present. The pair of remote-operated loaders allowed Khan to move four cryo-tubes at a time. That, combined with his intimate knowledge of the torpedoes, made for quick work and every fifteen minutes or so, he would reappear with the loaders to collect four more cryo-tubes.

 

On top of all of that, the anesthesia gas had turned out to be even more effective – and even more slowly metabolizing – than they had planned for, showing lingering neurocognitive effects long after the initial unconsciousness had worn off. Effects that kept the imprisoned personnel far more docile than Duval had anticipated and which had left _her_ far more available to help Khan with anything that she could, which kept the process moving like clockwork.

 

And as the hours ticked by and 1600 grew nearer and nearer…Duval began to get a knot in the pit of her stomach.

 

So well. It had all gone _so well_.

 

As she stood in the doorway between Warehouse 3 and 4 with a bound and mumbling Lieutenant-Commander Okushima laying on the floor at her feet, she watched as Khan lowered the very last cryo-tube into the very last torpedo…and felt that knot twist tighter. And when he had finished entirely and all that stood before them was a great pile of crates carrying even _more_ precious cargo than they had before, she acknowledged the knot for what it was.

 

Dread. 

 

Cold…hard… _dread_.

 

She had learned a long time ago that nothing in life ever came easy…and this…

 

This had been almost _ridiculously_ easy. True, a great deal of that was owed to their own particular gifts and abilities; even more to the careful planning that had gone into the entire operation. But still…

 

_You’re being greedy_ , a voice whispered inside her mind, full of so much warning that it made her chest feel tight. _You’ve reached for the moon and caught it. Why the hell would you aim higher than that? Why the hell are you going to risk what you already have for a ship? A **ship**?_

Khan, who was almost bouncing on his feet beside her, wrapped his arm around her waist, hauling her in to his side in a one-armed embrace. “Another step completed,” he breathed against the top of her head. “And with time to spare as well!”

 

“Yeah,” Duval said, trying very hard to sound as excited as he did and knowing that she wasn’t doing a very good job of it. All her doubts, held so hard in check for so long, played through her head – a litany of the most awful what-ifs that she could possibly imagine. She leaned into him, eyes slipping shut as she tried to tuck herself away inside the enormity of _him_. “A whole half an hour...aren’t we lucky?”

 

Above her, she heard him scoff – felt it too, in the sharp exhalation of breath that shook his chest. “It is nothing to do with _luck_ , Rebecca,” he said admonishingly, the arm around her waist pulling her in tighter. “And it is _everything_ to do with our own resourcefulness and meticulous planning.

 

“Right,” she said, hearing her own doubt and hating the sound of it. “Right. Nothing to do with luck at all.”

 

Khan laughed at that – _laughed_ – and then swung her around to face him, his free hand coming up to catch the back of her neck as he drew her up into a quick, searing kiss. When he pulled back only a moment later, he pressed his forehead to hers. “You are worrying again, Rebecca. Do stop it.”

 

That glib and far, _far_ too unconcerned response was the straw that broke her determination to keep her mouth shut and she brought her hands up to his chest, fingers grabbing fistfuls of his shirt and pulling him even closer. “Let’s just go,” she said fervently, the words spoken against his lips. “We’ve got them. We’ve got ourselves. When the transport gets here, let’s just take it and _go_ like we’d originally planned. _Please?_ ”

 

She felt his sigh, breathed it in…and knew that she was fighting a losing battle.

 

“We have discussed this, Rebecca,” he said, sounding vaguely disappointed but not entirely surprised. “I will not give up the Vengeance.”

 

“ _Khan_ …”

 

“No!” He pulled away from her, frowning as he put her at arm’s length, large hands gripping her biceps tight. “Stop it, Rebecca. The Vengeance is _mine_ and I _will_ have it. Nothing, not even _you,_ shall change my mind on that score.”

 

Duval closed her eyes, clamping down on the argument that wanted so desperately to spill forth, knowing that it wouldn’t do any good. After a moment, she shook her head and then opened her eyes, forcing a thin smile that she certainly didn’t feel. “I know that. But I had to ask…and I won’t apologize for it.”

 

Khan’s jaw clenched, eyes going dark as he stepped in towards her once more, lowering his head until his lips brushed the curve of her ear. “I do not wish you to,” he whispered hotly before pulling back from her entirely, his face carved from stone though his eyes _burned_. “I _never_ wish you to. You must always…” he stopped then, biting back on whatever words he had been about to say and spun around, stalking over to where Lieutenant-Commander Okushima lay in a heap.

 

Duval watched as he knelt down – presumably to haul the other woman up into his arms and carry her to a rationed storage locker of her own. Before he could lift her, Duval once more found the voice that his intensity had stolen.

 

“What, Khan?”

 

He froze for a long moment. Then, he stood, arms hanging at his side and hands clenched into fists. She took a step toward him, tracing the tense line of his proud shoulders, seeing in her mind’s eye the plane of smooth, alabaster flesh that sloped and arched beneath the black of his shirt. “I must always _what_?”

 

There was silence for one…two…three heartbeats…

 

“You must always speak your mind to me, Rebecca Duval,” he said, his voice quiet but the words somehow _loud_ in the silence of the cavernous space around them, “for it is your mind, above all else, that I cannot do without.” He took a step forward, as if to walk away, but then stopped once more, half-turning so that his face was cast into back-lit shadow. “There is little in this life that I count more dear.”

 

And then, he was moving again, bending down and grabbing up Okushima and then striding away down the corridor to Warehouse 3 with his head high, leaving Duval to stare after him, exhilaration at his words warring with the fears that even his supreme confidence could not banish from her mind.

 

* * *

 

 

They landed back on Io that night exactly as they had left it the day before – swiftly, silently and entirely unnoticed, capping off two days of near-perfection.

 

The transport team had arrived at Hornby only slightly behind schedule and the transfer had gone as easily as everything else had. Duval had been sure to tell both Lieutenant-Commander Okushima and her friend in transport that she would handle the transfer documents during their short confab in the CO’s office earlier, information that had apparently been relayed to the team that had been sent. The ranking member of the group who had brought her his PADD for her signature had merely thanked her for being so immediately available to them.

 

Duval had smiled and laughed, telling him it was no problem. _They_ were doing _her_ a favor, after all.

 

The ranking officer had given her a return grin and a quick salute before assuring her that the shipment would be delivered back to Io early the next morning – a little later than they had hoped and the only snag they had run into through the whole thing. It wasn’t _entirely_ unexpected though. Per regulations, all shipments going to and from Earth were first required to pass through the Section’s lunar checkpoint (based very snugly and secretly within the enormity of the Copernicus Ship Yards)…and the day was drawing to a close.

 

She could have pushed it – insisted that the shipment needed to be delivered ASAP – but really, what was the point? The Vengeance wasn’t scheduled to return until late the following day, so the slight delay changed nothing there. Plus, provided you had all of your documentation in order – which they _did_ – the stop off at Copernicus was just a formality; one that the torpedoes had already successfully traversed on their way _to_ Hornby. Better to just let it go, wait the few extra hours and avoid making any kind of waves at all.

 

So she had signed the docs and sent the torpedoes – and their unwitting passengers – on their way. A decision that Khan had fortunately expressed his full agreement with once the transport had disappeared from sight.

 

They had followed not long after, leaving the Hornby Bay Scientific Research Facility behind them with barely a second thought…and without so much as a backward glance.

 

Now, as they worked in tandem to unload the supplies that _hadn’t_ been left at the Lake Inari cabin, they were both quiet. Contemplative.

 

And in Duval’s case, quite frustratingly nervous and more than a little jumpy.

 

They hadn’t carried a great deal with them, and so the unloading didn’t take terribly long. But when they were finished and the last bag had been dropped into the far corner of the cargo bay, Duval stood, staring at the currently closed hangar doors that would open once more in just a few hours and deliver the penultimate piece of their grand puzzle into their keeping.

 

“Almost there,” she murmured, arms crossed over her chest and gaze distant – seeing _far_ beyond the doors themselves.

 

“Yes – almost there…”

 

Khan’s voice – low and rich and lovely – hummed the words from beside her and Duval started slightly, twisting her head around to look up at him where he had moved to stand beside her, his own hands locked together behind his back. He was watching the doors as well, though his expression lacked any of the tension that she felt; his eyes glittering instead with an eagerness that he didn’t even attempt to check. After a moment, he turned to look down at her, lips twisting up into the wicked smirk that had long ago won itself a place of honor in the pantheon of her heart.

 

It wasn’t fair, that smirk. It wasn’t fair by half.

 

Duval had never felt its effects more than she did at that very moment, when her own decidedly downturned lips responded to it like iron to a lodestone, pulling up…up…up…until she was grinning right back at him.

 

A grin that remained when he drew her to him and kissed her, nearly bending her backwards with the sheer force of his passion.

 

A grin that never faltered as he carried her across the cargo bay with her legs wrapped tight around his hips and her hands buried in the inky silk of his hair.

 

A grin that only grew as he lay her down atop a makeshift pallet made of thick winter coats over thin emergency blankets and covered her body with his, those wicked lips shamelessly mapping her skin from neck to knee…and everywhere in between.

 

A grin that turned sweet and soft as she curled into him in the afterglow, clothed once more and tucked tightly against his chest as she drifted off into a surprisingly easy sleep, the scent of him in her nose and the heat of him the best blanket she’d ever known.

 

A grin that only faltered when she was jolted awake in the early hours of the morning, by the one sound she had never… _ever…_ wanted to hear again.

 

The unmistakable – and utterly _shattering_ – sound of Alexander Marcus’ voice belting out over the main com.

 

“ _Well…well…well…would you just **look** at what we have here…”_

 

 

 


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I have been informed that this chapter is very…intense. So please, bear that in mind. Warnings for some fairly graphic violence. Please see the end of the chapter for further notes.

 

“ _Well…well…well…would you just **look** at what we have here…”_

 

She was moving before Marcus had even finished talking, all lingering vestiges of sleep swept away by the flood of adrenaline tearing through her veins. Eyes wide and heart pounding, Duval crawled up onto her knees, hands tearing at the closures on the bag that she had very deliberately left nearest to her the night before. Once it lay open before her, she dug in, pulling out the first weapon that came to hand – one of Khan’s; a modified, pistol-style, multi-setting phaser – which she very quickly armed before reaching behind her to tuck it into the waistband of her pants.

 

_“Y’know, I have to admit…I’m disappointed. I half-expected you’d pull something like this, but I figured you’d have been, I don’t know… **better** at it…”_

 

Duval pulled out another weapon, armed it and shoved it into the waistband of her pants as well, just over her left hip. There was no point in answering him, no point in even acknowledging him. There was no going back now; no more talking him around and definitely no more talking her way around him. No, now there was only forward…even if the path had just turned damn near impassable. Standing up, Duval brought the bag of weapons with her, tossing it over her neck and shoulder, adjusting the strap across her body until it was as comfortable as it was going to get.

 

_“Especially **you** , Duval. I thought you were my best. My brightest. Hell, as far as I was concerned, you were ten times the Agent your daddy had ever **dreamed** of being. But now? Now, I’ve seen the truth…and the truth is, you’re just as weak as he was. Just as **stupid**. The apple never does fall far from the tree, does it?”_

She ignored him, let the words slide right off her without feeling even a shadow of their intended sting. Marcus was a liar and not a terribly good one – at least, not in her case. Duval had known him too well for too long; she knew his truths and she knew his tells and the fact of the matter was…his opinion meant absolutely _nothing_ to her now.

“Rebecca.”

 

Khan’s voice, sharp and deadly. She turned toward it – toward _him_ – seeing in his face the same unflinching resolve that she felt; fury and grit hardening into solid steel within her. Their eyes locked, held for a long, timeless moment…she counted one breath…two…three…

 

_“One little electrical short – that’s all it took. One…little…short. And in a minor system, no less. Should’ve been a quick, easy fix. But then, my Chief Engineer goes to pull the wiring schematic and imagine his surprise when he found…nothing. Imagine **my** surprise when I ran into the same damn problem trying to get hold of you two.”_

Duval frowned slightly, those words sneaking through despite her best efforts to pay Marcus absolutely no mind. What did he mean, they found nothing? What was the old bastard even talking about?

_“It was just so… **amateur**. So **sloppy**. Wiping the Vengeance construction schematics from the Section databanks while the ship was still under testing? Who the hell thought **that** was a good idea?”_

If she hadn’t been watching Khan so carefully – if she hadn’t known him so well – Duval would have missed the tiny, nearly non-existent tic of his left brow, the almost infinitesimal tightening of the already tense muscle of his jaw. But she _had_ been watching and she _did_ know him and she saw those clues…and she read them as easily as she would have a book.

 

_He_ had done it, of course. He had wiped the Vengeance’s construction documents from the Section databanks and he had done it without even _discussing_ it with her first. He had done it because he refused to leave Marcus with the ability to replicate his genius. He had done it because he hadn’t expected it to matter. He had done it because he had, in all his astounding arrogance, assumed that _his_ ship – _his_ creation – couldn’t possibly be anything less than _perfect._

He had done it because he was _him_ …and Duval saw no point in wasting anger on that _now_.

 

Later, certainly. But not now.

 

She narrowed her eyes at him, letting him see her displeasure. “You’re gonna hear about this later.”

 

His eyes blazed and he dipped his head, acknowledging her with a sharp, staccato nod. Saying nothing, Khan extended one of his specially modified phase-rifles out between them, two others already strapped across his broad back and another dangling from its strap over his left shoulder. Duval reached out and took it from him, hands instinctively finding the proper positions on the grip and the guard, her finger hugging the trigger as she held the weapon to her, muzzle pointed at the ground and butt tucked into her shoulder.

 

_“Those weapons aren’t going to help you. Try all you want, but you can bet your asses you won’t be walking out of this as easily as you walked into it.”_

Khan’s head snapped up just as the door to the corridor hissed open and she watched as all the heat drained from his face, leaving him cold, blank – as truly deadly as she had ever seen him. Boots pounded across the grated floor behind her and Duval spun toward the sound, weapon immediately snapping up to shooting position. Khan was behind her now, though not for long – before the first black-clad figure came into view, he was at her side, his own weapon shouldered and ready, finger already hanging heavy on the long-pull trigger.

 

_“Did I forget to mention that I had two security teams en route? Sorry. Guess it slipped my mind in all the… **excitement**.”_

 

Two teams. Eight men on each team. Sixteen men total. And with those sixteen highly-trained men, came sixteen high-powered weapons – all of them, Khan’s handiwork. Not the best odds Duval had ever faced. In fact, the only thing keeping them from being the _worst_ was the man standing beside her. As far as equalizers went, she suspected that he was probably about as good as it got.

 

Duval kept her eyes on the targets in front of her, but a big chunk of her focus was on the man beside her. She wasn’t used to looking elsewhere in life or death situations, accustomed to relying on her own instincts, making all her own calls. But she was officially out of her depth – they’d gone off the edge of the map for good now. The only thing she _could_ do now was rely on Khan; to trust that, if anyone could get them out of this, it was _him_.

 

So to say that she was less than thrilled when he began to shake his head and _laugh_ …well…that would have been a _hell_ of an understatement…

 

Apparently, she wasn’t the only one to find his reaction irksome.

 

_“You’ve got sixteen super-powered weapons pointed at you, just waiting for my order to fire…and you think it’s **funny**?”_

Marcus had gotten progressively more vicious as he spoke and the last word came out as a full-on yell. Khan, entirely unmoved and still chuckling, tipped his head back, eyes going to the ceiling as he addressed Marcus head-on for the first time since they had awoken so abruptly.

 

“You insult me, _Alexander_ ,” he drawled Marcus’ given name, enough condescension in his tone to set even Duval’s teeth on edge. “Two security teams? To subdue _me_? Will you never cease to underestimate me?”

 

There was a pause and then a sigh, deep and entirely feigned. Foreboding, thick and fierce, dragged at Duval’s insides, pulling her stomach down toward her boots. Her eyes skipped back and forth, up and down the line of guards, seeing absolutely nothing in their grim-faced focus to staunch the flow of dread that was swiftly pooling in her chest.

 

_“See now, that’s where you’re wrong. I haven’t underestimated you. I’m well aware that it would take more than two teams to subdue you. But, Khan…who said anything about **subduing** you?”_

As if that had been precisely the signal they’d been waiting for, all sixteen weapons aimed at them lifted high; all sixteen men holding them beginning to inch forward, tightening their ranks. One man stepped even further forward than the rest, the barrel of his rifle dipping slightly as he reached into his tactical vest, drawing out what looked to be a handheld holographic emitter. He activated it, the small device humming to life as he bent, setting it on the ground before backing up, closing ranks yet again. Duval, her eyes bouncing between the projected image of an empty starscape below and the line of rifle points above, tightened her grip on her own weapon, holding her ground even as she fought the instinctive urge to retreat. Beside her, she could feel Khan’s tension; could see, out of the corner of her eye, the way that the smug smile had dropped off his face.

 

“What is this, Marcus?” Khan’s voice was harsh, biting – but Duval could hear the tension beneath the anger. The _fear_.

 

_“You **know** what it is, Khan. You’re more trouble than you’re worth. And I warned you – I **warned** you. I said I’d make you **watch** …”_

Khan sucked in a sudden breath and Duval, despite her best attempts, looked away from the security teams. Eyes leaping to his face, she registered the horror there and felt an answering swell of it in her chest. Not wanting to look, but knowing that she _had_ to, she shifted her gaze back to the projection…and there it was.

 

The source of Khan’s terror. The realization of every fear that had eaten at him for the past year...

 

The flickering starscape wasn’t empty anymore, filled now with the image of a ship as it sailed silently across the star-dotted blackness. It was a moderately large ship, slow and lumbering by modern standards, and it bore no markings, deliberately and perfectly nondescript as it plowed along toward its final destination. Most importantly of all, it was a _familiar_ ship…carrying even more familiar cargo.

 

_Not that_. Duval’s breath caught in her throat and her eyes, burning with tears she simply couldn’t afford, jumped back to Khan. _Please…not that_.

 

“No,” Khan breathed the word like a prayer, like a curse – like a plea. His face had gone pale and he lowered his weapon, taking a single, trembling step toward the projected image. “Marcus… _no_ …”

 

_“And by God, Khan…I’m a man of my word. So you open those eyes wide, you arrogant son of a bitch…and you **watch** …”_

Against her will, Duval turned, her eyes drawn inexorably toward the projection. She didn’t want to see…she didn’t want to watch…but neither could she look away. Eyes locked on the ship she’d last seen only yesterday – that she had stood beside while one precious crate was loaded on board after another – she felt her stomach roll and her heart clench. There were so many of them; she had realized that as she stared out over the rows upon rows of cryotubes the day before. Seventy-two, such an empty concept to her before, had suddenly been given meaning as she walked those rows, ran her eyes over the peacefully slumbering faces lying beneath thick panes of alumino-silicate glass.

 

More than an idea, now. More than merely a second-hand memory. They had become peopleto her during their time at Hornby. Real, thinking, feeling _people._ Each of them different. Each of them unique. So very many of them that she had both longed to know and yet dreaded to meet…

 

A streak of light flashed across the image…and then another…and then another. As Duval watched, her breath catching in a throat that suddenly felt too tight, those streaks of brilliant white – _photon torpedoes_ , her brain supplied – converged, slamming into the ship from three different angles. Plumes of flame erupted out of the hull breaches as the torpedoes detonated and then, horrifically, the ship appeared almost to suck in on itself, nearly imploding before suddenly blowing back outward again. The explosion that followed was violent; the entire vessel nearly disintegrating before their eyes into a swiftly expanding shockwave of rolling flame and thick smoke.

 

It was a physical pain, a sharp, stinging throb that drew a horrified whimper from her lips. Beside her, she heard a choked sound and turned her head toward it just in time to watch the strongest man she had ever known stumble backwards away from the destructive scene. She wanted to go to him, longed to close the distance between them and catch him to her; to hold him and offer him what meager comfort she could…but she was stuck. Paralyzed by the horror of it all; by the sheer magnitude of the loss that he – that _they_ – had just suffered.

 

His people were gone.

 

His _family_ was dead.

 

They’d failed.

 

Khan’s eyes dropped shut, his head falling back. His shoulders bowed, sagging beneath a weight that she had never, ever wanted to see him carry and _Christ_ , it made her heart – so much his that it may as well have been beating in his chest – just _ache_.

 

“No.”

 

His voice broke on the word; a shattered, rasping whisper that chased the rest of the world away. Duval lowered her weapon, everything else forgotten – _erased_ – by the sheer, staggering _torment_ that radiated from him like heat from a sun. She took an irresistible step toward him, drawn, as always to his side. “I’m sorry,” she said, the words barely audible as they slipped past her lips. “Oh God…I’m so sorry…”

 

“NO!”

 

This time, it was a wail; a soul-deep howl that froze her in place and knocked the air from her lungs. This…this moment…his pain…it was everything that she had never wanted. Everything that she had worked so goddamned _hard_ to prevent. Everything that she had _prayed_ that she would never, ever see or hear or feel.

 

She should have known better. When had any of her prayers _ever_ been answered?

 

_“I told you not to cross me, Khan. I promised you that I would take everything from you. That I would **break** you. Killing your people – well, that was a hell of a start. But...that’s not quite **everything** , is it?”_

Duval sucked in a breath, every muscle in her body going tense at the unmistakable feel of a rifle muzzle pressed directly against the thin skin of her temple. The sound of her distress, even as small as it had been, caught Khan’s ear. His head snapped up, red-rimmed eyes blinking open.

 

It happened in an instant. Before her very eyes – in the space between one heartbeat and the next – he…changed. Hardened.

 

The crushing grief, the heartrending guilt…vanished; disappeared, as it if had never been there at all. In its place, filling him up from within until he was utterly lost to it came something far more terrifying.

 

_Wrath._

He was consumed by it; swallowed whole within its darkness. His eyes went glacial with a rage so dark, so feral, that it sent a shiver of fear down her spine. If the sudden shudder she could feel coming down the length of the barrel was any indication, she wasn’t the only one who felt it, either.

 

Her right hand, which had ever so slowly and carefully been inching its way into the side pocket of the weapons bag that rested against her hip, finally felt the comforting brush of cool metal against her fingertips. Closing her hand around the hilt of the d’k tahg she’d taken off the very first Klingon she had ever killed, she met Khan’s eyes – cold and hard now, but still _his_ – and gave him a _look_ ; a vicious, knowing twist of her lips.

 

She was done with being used as a weapon against him; tired of being a pawn on Alexander Marcus’ personal chessboard.

 

Moving with more speed than anyone had clearly given her credit for possessing, Duval knocked the rifle away from her head with one arm as she drew the d’k tahg with the other, swinging her arm up and burying the straight-edged blade into her would-be assassin’s throat, just beneath his jaw.

 

Before his body had hit the floor, Khan was moving, tearing past her in a dizzying blur of black. Duval watched in awe as he tore his way through two…three…five…nine…

 

It was a master class in hand-to-hand combat; a culmination of every little hint, every carefully constrained show of force and skill that he had ever shown. Khan was poetry in motion as he spun and kicked and killed, snapping bone and twisting metal with equal ease as he tore his way through every man that stood in his way. He moved almost too fast for her to follow, dodging everything from fists to plasma pulses and making the deliverer of each pay in turn.

 

He was…a _revelation_.

 

And apparently, not only to her.

 

_“No! What are you **doing**? **Kill** him. No…how…how the **fuck** …”_

Above her head, Marcus was seething. Shocked. Barking orders.

 

_Panicking_.

 

_“Have a care what you wish for, Admiral.”_ Khan’s voice whispered the words from across her memory, her mind recalling that day, so long ago now, when his temper had so very nearly slipped the bonds of his remarkable self-control. _“I assure you – you’ve not yet seen what **one** of me can do.”_

She had thought, then, that she understood what he meant. But she hadn’t; not really. And Marcus…

 

 

Marcus hadn’t had even the first _clue_.

 

At that stunned realization, Duval blew out the breath she’d been holding, feeling a sliver of hope that they might _actually_ survive this. Noticing for the first time that she had dropped her rifle at some point in the past few minutes – irritating, that; she couldn’t afford to lose focus like that – she knelt down, scooping up the weapon and snapping it up to her shoulder, taking aim at the nearest guard left standing.

 

When it was all over barely five minutes after it had started, Duval stood back up, slinging her rifle over her shoulder. Khan stood several feet away from her, breathing hard, his face still twisted into a mask of sheer, brutal fury. Between them, sixteen bodies lay where they had fallen.

 

The all-call system had gone quiet and Duval knew that they only had so long before the next wave came charging through the cargo bay doors. Spinning on her heel, she bolted across the room to where she had stowed their Portable Trans-warp Beaming Devices. Grabbing the straps for both, she hurried back to Khan, holding one of them out to him expectantly.

 

“We have to go,” she said, proud of herself for sounding so calm when she felt anything but. “Marcus will have this place _crawling_ with Agents before we know it.”

 

She had already been adjusting her own device, powering it up the way he’d shown her to do, preparing to activate it…when she suddenly realized that the other one was _still_ hanging from her hand. Stilling – all her dread beginning to creep back in – she took two deep breaths and then looked up, finding Khan watching her through those cold… _empty_ …eyes.

 

“No.”

 

This time when he said the word, it was vicious, low…and implacable.

 

Fingers white-knuckling the strap of the device that suddenly felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, Duval shook her head, desperation swiftly replacing the hope she’d been foolish enough to let in. “What do you mean, _no_?”

 

“The Vengeance,” Khan spat, his face pinched with barely leashed violence. “It is mine and I _will_ have it. That has not changed, Rebecca.”

 

Arm shaking now, Duval gave the device a sharp shake, fighting back the urge to fling it at his head in her own mounting anger. “Don’t be _stupid,_ Khan. After…after _this_ …” she gestured to the bodies that lay strewn around them, “we’ll never make it. Marcus will have the whole station on alert before we even have a chance.”

 

“Let him!” He snarled the words, each one falling like the lash of a whip. “Let them _dare_ try and stop me now.”

 

He spun away, stalking across the room; _consumed_. Duval watched him go – watched him walk away from her – and it felt like a knife, straight to her heart. “Khan…” she breathed his name, fighting against the burn of imminent tears. “I know you’re hurting. I know you want to kill… _everyone_. But your people…they’re _gone_ , Khan. They’re gone and this…what you’re doing…it’s…it’s _suicide_. We’ll never make it. But if we go now, we can regroup. Try again. If we go…”

 

“ _No!_ I cannot…I _will not_ leave! Not now!”

 

Khan, who had been collecting weapons from each corpse he passed, bellowed the words, but did not stop what he was doing. Brimming with frustration, Duval rubbed a hand over her eyes, trying hard to find the _right_ thing to say to convince him not to do this – knowing deep down that there was no such thing. “You’re grieving, Khan, and it’s making you _reckless_ ,” she said finally, knowing how harsh it come out but not caring in the slightest. “You’re grieving and you’re not thinking. You are going to get yourself killed and then Marcus will have won. Please, explain to me how _that_ sounds like the better plan here!”

 

Khan, dripping with an arsenal’s worth of firepower, whipped around to face her, his eyes a maelstrom of flame and freeze – devoid of everything but a dark, merciless anger and an even darker and utterly unquenchable hate. “You may well be right,” Khan said, the words low and ragged. “But it matters not. I want the Vengeance, Rebecca. I want it and I _will_ have it and with it, I shall take _my_ vengeance on Alexander Marcus…on Section 31…on _Starfleet_ , itself.”

 

Duval listened to him, shocked and shattered by what she’d just heard. Her face crumpled into an expression of pained disbelief. She’d imagined…so many different outcomes to this whole situation. And this…this was so much worse than her worst case scenario.

 

This was pure insanity.

 

“Please…please tell me you’re not _serious_?”

 

“I am more than serious, Rebecca – I am _decided_. And I will not be swayed.”

 

With that, he spun around again, showing her his back as he started determinedly toward the door. Duval watched him walk away, torn as she had never been before. She looked down at the device in her hands – at the survival that sat right there in front of her – and she knew…

 

She was never going to use it. Not without him.

 

Because she chose him, of course. She always chose him. She _would_ always choose him, in the end.

 

_Christ almighty_ , she snarled at herself, _you absolute glutton for fucking punishment..._

 

“ _Wait_!” The word tore from her throat, a little bit desperate and a whole lot pissed off. Her jaw clenched until it ached. “You just…you _wait_.”

 

He stopped once more, letting out a snarl. “There is no _time_ for debate, Rebecca. We must move quickly!”

 

“I know that,” she snapped, furious. With him. With herself. With the entire goddamn universe. “I just need a minute, ok?”

 

Khan’s shoulders straightened and he glanced at her over his shoulder, still cold…still hard. “One minute,” he growled, impatience mingling with his anger, “no more.”

 

She shoved it all down; put it all away. All of her hesitation…all of her misgivings…all of her frustration...she gathered it all up, locked it up tight in the deep, dark emotional repository that held all of her worst feelings and thoughts and memories. Maybe, someday, she’d be able to take them out and work through them, but for now...for today…

 

She’d made the decision; she was staying…and they had work to do. There was no way she was going to let anything get in the way of that.

 

A moment later, the weapons bag – handy but far too cumbersome – hit the floor at her feet. Another moment and one trans-warp beaming device lay slung across her back, the other across her front. The moment after that, she was at his side, rifle in hand and determination screwed firmly in place.

 

“Leave those,” Khan said sharply, gesturing toward the devices. “They will only slow you down and we can afford no delays.”

 

She grit her teeth and bit back on a far sharper retort. “Worry about yourself. I’ve got this.”

 

“We will have no need of them, Rebecca.”

 

She took a deep breath, tipped her eyes up to his – tried not to glare. “I’m not leaving them. End of discussion.”

 

A growl. “ _Rebecca_ …”

 

“I’m following you, Khan,” she said loudly, talking straight over him as she looked back to the door. “And since we can’t afford any delays, maybe you should stop talking and start moving.”

 

She could feel his eyes on her, could feel the burn of his no-doubt furious gaze. But she kept her eyes forward, refusing to look. Then, finally, he blew out a frustrated sigh and without another word, he was out the door with Duval following hard on his heels.

 

They set off at a jog, each taking turns clearing any connecting corridors that they came to, each feeling just a little more surprised when they kept finding…nothing. No rushing security guards. No slyly creeping Agents.

 

Nothing. No one. It was as if Marcus hadn’t sent anyone at all to stop them, which Duval knew couldn’t possibly be true. Far more likely, she guessed, that Marcus – in all his smug arrogance – simply hadn’t been prepared in any way, shape or form for them to survive his planned execution. As she’d known for a long time now, the old bastard was a sucker for his own hype.

 

But still, it floored her just how far they made it before running into even the barest hint of trouble.

 

When they reached the main part of the station, the corridors, to her surprise, began to fill up, bustling with activity – far more activity than she would have expected, given the situation. Engineers and construction specialists and off-duty Agents hurried here, there and everywhere as if it were just any other day.

 

At least, until _they_ came plowing through. Or more specifically, until _Khan_ came plowing through.

 

He was running flat out, far faster than she could on her best day, let alone when she was loaded down with gear as she was now. Duval kept up as best she could – something made far easier by the cleared path that spun out in his wake, leaping over those who had been foolish enough not to get out of his way.

 

She ignored them all, every person who called her name or cried out questions about what was going on. They mattered even less to her now than they had before and she blew past them like she didn’t even see them. Twisting and turning, past the gym and the mess and the turn off to the quarters that she would never see again, she sped up and down corridors as familiar to her now as any place she had ever known.

 

It was as she sped through the doors and into the hangar where the Vengeance was once again docked that the unmistakable sounds of phaser fire reached her ears. Rather than slowing down, she picked up her pace, eyes locked now on the sight of Khan, standing tall and proud and without even a lick of cover at the base of the aft gangplank. He was exchanging fire with – she counted quickly as she ran toward them – what looked to be a three-man security detail. Pulling her rifle up to her shoulder as she ran, she popped off two quick shots, dropping one of the guards…as well as the Agent that had been approaching Khan on his blindside.

 

She reached Khan’s side a moment later – just in time to start after him when he started up the gangplank and onto the ship. He had chosen the scenic route, bringing them on-board in the bowels of the ship rather than at the fore where they would have been near the bridge. It was inconvenient, but it made sense. If Marcus had set guards on the ship, he would undoubtedly have focused the greatest concentration of them on the bridge itself, as well as those areas immediately surrounding it. Still, she thought it best to confirm their route…just in case…

 

“We’re heading for the bridge, right?”

 

“Of course. Where else would we…”

 

The flash-bang of a plasma grenade swallowed the rest of his words. It had detonated behind them, thrown just slightly shy of its intended target – too far away to kill, but more than close enough for the blast-wave to knock them both off their feet. They were flung forward violently; Duval slamming face-first into a wall.

 

Winded and gasping and feeling like she’d been slugged in the back with a crow bar, Duval pushed herself up to her knees, trying like mad to suck back in the air that had been knocked out of her. She caught sight of Khan just off to her right, moving slower than she was used to as he also pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, broken pieces of the scaffolding he’d been tossed into rolling off his back as he moved.  Vaguely, as if through a fog, she heard shouting from behind her. She turned, spying three more Agents, as black-clad as she was, moving toward them down the corridor.

 

She had lost her rifle in the blast and didn’t have time to search for it. Going instinctively to her hip, she drew the far smaller but no less effective pistol-style phaser that she had tucked away there. Bringing it up, she didn’t bother to aim, just laid a wide, generous swath of fire across the entire corridor. A moment later, Khan’s fire joined hers and the last of their attackers dropped to the floor.

 

Once that was done, Duval dropped back to lean against the wall for a moment, eyes closing as she breathed deep. As the shock of the blast began to wear off, a veritable cornucopia of aches and pains began to make themselves known – not least of which being a persistent, dull throbbing in her left ear. Reaching up to prod at it gently, she was more than a little put out when her fingers found the warm, sticky trickle of blood that she’d been hoping _not_ to find. “Son a bitch,” she growled, wiping her fingers down her pant leg to clean them off.

 

“Rebecca…are you…”

 

“Fine,” she answered, annoyed. “Goddamn grenade blew out my eardrum, but I’m fine.” She looked up, eyes falling on Khan, who was standing now on the opposite side of the corridor. He was hunched over slightly, his face pinched and oddly pale and he was favoring his left side something fierce…

 

Her eyes dropped, seeking the problem…and she froze as soon as she found it, her heart leaping straight up into her throat. A broken piece of scaffolding, at least six inches long, was sticking out of Khan’s side, just above his right hip. “You…you’re not fine…”

 

It had been an asinine thing to say, but she thought she could be forgiven under the circumstances. Khan certainly appeared to take no notice, merely tightening his jaw as he braced himself against the wall beside him. “It is of little consequence, Rebecca.” He reached down, grasping the bit of pipe in one hand and pulling it out with a hiss and a grunt of pain. Pressing one hand to the wound, he raised his rifle in the other and jerked his chin in the direction they had been running. “Keep moving.”

 

Duval took two hesitant steps toward him, eyes locked on the blood that had seeped through his fingers, thick and dark. “Khan…you’re _hurt_. We can’t…”

 

“We can,” he cut her off, pushing away from the wall and stalking toward her, a small but noticeable hitch in his step thanks to the wound in his side. “We can and we _shall_ – so keep up or get left behind, _Lieutenant_.”

 

Her expression hardened at that and she glared up at him, utterly unmoved by his face looming over hers. There was a cut beneath his right eye, a gash over his left…but the wounds served only to make him look even fiercer and far more deadly. Despite her annoyance, she studied his gaze intently, finding it steady, the awareness behind his eyes sharp – injured, yes; but _far_ from incapacitated. She nodded sharply, grip tightening on her phaser. “Right. Sorry. Still following you.”

 

“I’m very glad to hear it.” He whirled away from her, slinging his rifle over his shoulder as he started down one of the smaller, side corridors.

 

She hurried along behind him, her own weapon at the ready. Khan turned at the next cross-hall, taking them down yet another side corridor. Duval blinked, _really_ looking around for the first time, surprised to see exactly where he had led them.

 

It was a back route that she knew well; a utility corridor. Long and gently curving, the hallway ran all the way around Engineering. It had begun its life in the earliest of Khan’s plans as little more than an over-sized wiring conduit. The final product, after months of tweaks and development was a far larger, far more complex combination of conduit and traffic by-pass, housing everything from transformers to warp core cooling components. Duval, chewing at her lip, glanced down at the gun clutched in her hands…remembering…

 

“This…” she stopped, frowning. “We can’t use these here,” she said, giving her phaser a shake when Khan turned to look at her. “Can we?”

 

“No,” he affirmed, throwing open another door and stepping through it, out into what she knew would be Engineering proper. “Nor in here either – a fact of which Marcus is well aware. I doubt he will permit his minions to engage us here and risk damaging his precious ship.”

 

There was a small part of her that wanted to toss that comment right back at him; point out that Marcus was hardly the only one who treated the Vengeance with that level of blind reverence. But there was a much larger part of her that knew that would be a very bad idea, so she bit back on the observation. _Hard_.

 

Instead, she chose to focus on the far safer subject of logistics.

 

“I assume you plan to avoid the larger corridors.”

 

“Yes,” Khan replied as they jogged past the warp core housing. “We will use the access tunnels. Quicker and far more efficient – barring any unforeseen delays, we should be on the bridge in less than fifteen minutes.”

 

Duval nodded, shifting her shoulders beneath the ever-growing weight of the two trans-warp beaming devices she still carried. “Good,” she acknowledged gruffly. “The sooner the better.”

 

They had reached the section of floor that the access tunnel lay beneath and Duval took up position at Khan’s back, weapon up and ready, eyes sweeping the room behind them as he pulled up the panel that covered it. A moment later, she heard the clang of it hitting the floor. Looking back over her shoulder, she watched Khan sling his rifle over his shoulder, positioning it high up across his back.

 

Glancing up, he caught her eye and gave her a nod of acknowledgement. “I will lead,” he declared before turning and dropping down hip-deep into the tunnel below. “Stay close, Rebecca.”

 

With that last command laying heavy in the air between them, he crouched down, disappearing into the tunnel entirely and then moved off into the network of passageways that crisscrossed the entire ship. Duval, eyeing the relatively narrow space dubiously, opened her mouth to call for him to wait, but then stopped, not wanting to hear his inevitable comments when she told him the problem. Or problems, as the case may be. She was, it looked to her, about two trans-warp beaming devices too big for this particular shaft – and there was no _way_ she was dumping either of them.

 

Not when she was still quietly certain that they were going to need them.

 

Well. There was nothing for it…she’d push the damn things ahead of her if she had too. It was far from an ideal solution, but needs must.

 

Tucking her weapon away at her hip once more, she shifted the first trans-warp beaming device – the one that had been laying across her chest – over her head and off. The second one, she lifted away as well, rolling her shoulders as its weight lifted from her back. When she swung _that_ one around, she froze, a fresh batch of dread pouring like ice water down her throat and into her stomach.

 

It was broken; having caught, she assumed, the brunt of the grenade blast. The casing had cracked open, spilling charred wires down the side, some still sparking ominously. She eyed the damage, wanting to scream because for _fuck’s sake_ , could anything _else_ go wrong?

Duval, pissed off and terrified but trying desperately not to be either, chucked the ruined lifeline to the floor, her eyes sliding shut as it crashed and skidded away – nothing now but a discarded, useless lump of metal. “Shit,” she bit out harshly. “Goddamn it. Son of a _bitch_.”

 

Behind her, a floor grate creaked; the sound an almost startling groan in the silence. The hair on the back of Duval’s neck prickled and alarm bells started sounding in her head. Her hand, a step ahead of her brain, shot to her hip, fingers wrapping around her phaser even as her instincts started screaming at her that she _was not alone_.

 

It occurred to her as she spun around, fingers tight around the butt of the weapon, that she wasn’t supposed to fire it here.

 

It also occurred to her, as she brought the weapon up, that she didn’t particularly give a shit what she was _supposed_ to do.

 

The threat was obvious and immediate…and much closer than she’d expected. He was also familiar to her – one of the older, more experienced field Agents. Ralston Byrnes. They’d run ops together in the past. _Succesful_ ops, too.

 

“Byrnes.” She acknowledged him warily, noting his empty hands…and not trusting it for a second.

 

“Duval.” His voice was flat, revealing nothing. He took another slow, measured step toward her.

 

It was one move too many, as far as she was concerned. Especially when he was watching her with the same sort of cool-eyed purpose that she was fairly certain that she had worn herself countless times over the past decade. She leveled her phaser on him, finger twitching down to the trigger with obvious intent.

 

Byrnes’ head tilted, eyes hardening with undaunted purpose.

 

Time seemed to slow down then; she could feel every heartbeat…hear every breath. She squeezed the trigger with a firm pull just as Byrnes lunged forward. He grabbed her wrists, forcing them up and sending the phaser blast careening up to the ceiling. Duval met his eyes grimly, already thinking ahead to her next move...

 

She froze, eyes going wide as time suddenly sped up once again. Her mouth fell open, she sucked in a loud, gasping breath…and barely felt like she’d taken a breath at all. Byrnes stood in front of her, one hand still holding her wrists high, while the other kept a firm grasp on the hilt of the knife he had buried into the right side of her chest, just between her ribs.

 

“Sorry about this, Duval,” he said, so solemn that she could almost believe that he meant it. He squeezed her wrists until the phaser dropped from her suddenly nerveless fingers, kicking it away once it hit the floor. He released her wrists then, letting them flop limply down to her sides. “But orders are orders.”

 

He leaned further into her then, twisting the blade and then jerking his arm a few inches sideways. Duval let out a strangled cry, falling into him as a shock of searing, ripping pain tore through her side and up into her throat.

 

Brynes pulled away then, yanking hard on the blade to take it with him and Duval cried out again as another wave of crippling pain crashed over her, sending her to her knees. She knelt there, arms still hanging at her side, breathing hard, sucking in useless mouthfuls of air that only seemed to make her feel even more breathless.

 

She tipped her head back, looking up at him.

 

He stood staring down at her, the knife, stained dark red with her blood, still in his hand. Giving her a nod that she guessed was supposed to be sympathetic – but which, even now, just served to piss her off. “I know you understand.”

 

She glared up at him, gulping down ragged breaths, trembling fingers creeping behind her back…finding the phaser she had stuck there earlier, gripping it tight. “Agent…Byrnes?” she gasped out, the words reedy but sharp. “Likewise.”

 

The phaser was out and fired before he even knew what hit him, the blast catching him square in the heart and he dropped to the floor in front of her, a heap of twitching black fabric. As soon as he was down, Duval dropped the phaser and reached out toward the unbroken trans-warp beaming device, struggling to pull it to her. Time, already their enemy, had turned even further against them. She needed to get to Khan and she needed to do it fast; the ominous rattle that accompanied her increasingly labored breaths made that abundantly clear.

 

_Hemothorax._ The word whispered through her mind. _Possible pneumothorax._ She gasped in another of those terrifying, rattling breaths. _Definite collapsed lung. Bad. Very bad._ And without immediate care…

 

“Rebecca?”

 

Her name was an impatient hiss from behind her, echoing slightly as it bounced up off the walls of the access tunnel. Duval nearly wept at the sound of it, of her name…in _his_ voice. She heard the scrape and shuffle as he moved back toward her through the tunnel.

 

“Rebecca,” he hissed, and his voice came from just below. “What _are_ you…”  

 

“Khan…here…” she cut him off, knowing that they didn’t have time to waste. She slipped the strap of the trans-warp device over her arm, turned herself around as quickly as she could. Grunting, she hauled herself across the few feet that lay between her and the service port, grabbing onto the open edge and pulling herself over the last few inches.

 

From below, an inhale, short and sharp. “There is blood on your hand…”

 

“Had…a problem,” she said, trying very hard not to blackout. “Took…care of it.”

 

A rush of air brushed across her face, cool across the clammy heat of her cheeks. Another, even sharper gasp and Duval lifted her eyes to find Khan standing in front of her, his wide, horrified eyes staring directly into hers.

 

“You are injured.”

 

“Here…” she dropped her eyes; couldn’t listen to him. Not without crying, at least…and there were few things that would have been worse for her at that moment than choked tears. She focused instead on the device, scooting it closer before lifting it toward him with as much purpose as she could. “Take…take this.”

 

When he didn’t…when it just banged against the floor, the weight of it just too _much_ , she frowned and tipped her head back to glare at him. “Take…it,” she wheezed, blinking hard through a sudden wave of dizziness. “You…you _need_ it.”

 

He just stared at her, perfect lips parted and eyes gone dark. He lifted his hand, but didn’t take the device from her; shaking fingertips brushing softly against her lower lip…coming away bloody.

 

For a paralyzed moment, they both stared at the smear of red against his pale skin, her labored breathing a portentous counterpoint to their shared dread.

 

“ _Rebecca_ …”

 

Her eyes dropped closed and she let out a frustrated sob, her arm drooping even lower and dull panic worming its way through the parts of her that hadn’t quite gone numb yet. “Please,” she gasped, reaching out for him blindly, “please…I…I _can’t…_ carry it…anymore…”

 

Finally, the weight of the device disappeared. A moment later, big hands – _strong_ hands – were lifting her up, supporting her as she stood beside him. Then, one of those hands, warm and gentle, pressed against the wound.

 

She let out a low moan, the extra pressure falling on her chest like a hammer-blow and Khan choked out a curse. Then, suddenly, he swung her up and off her feet, her head cradled against his shoulder. One of his arms curved behind her, a band of steel across her back; the other hooked beneath her knees, keeping her tight to his chest. It took her a moment to realize that he was moving… _running_ …the access tunnel left wide and gaping behind them as he tore back the way they’d come.

 

Duval frowned, trying hard to focus though it was getting harder and harder with every unproductive breath she took. “Where’re…going? Bridge…other way.”

 

“Medical,” Khan barked, his voice low, thick. “It is…it is fully stocked. I know enough. I should…I _will_ help you. Fix you.”

 

Her frown deepened and she rolled her head backwards, attempting to look up at him and seeing only the tense, twitching muscle along his jaw and the razor sharp jut of his cheekbone. It was useless, she knew, to even attempt to claim that she was fine, because she was far, _far_ from it, but there was something in his voice, in the clutch of his fingers, that made her want to try. There was an entirely different kind of edge to him now; less dark, more frantic.

 

He was muttering as he ran, words that she had to force herself to focus on, spoken low, absent; a rush of thoughts that she could barely keep up with. Something about cannulas, which was vaguely familiar; something else about seals that she didn’t quite follow. But it was when she heard him muttering about gauges and chest tubes that she finally understood.

 

He had diagnosed her, come to the same conclusion that she had and he was going over the supplies that he would need once they reached Sickbay.

 

Duval began to shake her head, increasingly shallow breaths rattling in her chest. “No,” she rasped, fingers pulling at his shirt. “Won’t…be time. Khan…you can’t…”

 

“Shut _up_ ,” he hissed, turning the corner that took them into the correct corridor, Sickbay looming ever closer. He lowered his head then, pressing his cheek against the top of her head. “Shut up and _breathe_ , Rebecca. Just… _breathe_.”

 

It was meant to be an order, she knew. But it hadn’t come out that way. His voice – always so sure, so strong – had cracked, turning the intended command into an entreaty. An appeal.

 

A plea.

 

Duval’s heart twisted and she closed her eyes, pressing herself back against him as best she could as she nodded. She could do that. She _would_ do that. For him, she would do anything.

 

And she did. She breathed – in and out, as steady and deep as she could manage. If that wasn’t even as effective as it had been only a few minutes before, well…she wasn’t going to think about that. She was going to focus on breathing in and breathing out…breathing in and breathing…

 

She coughed. Kept coughing…gasped…coughed even more.

 

It hurt. Dear _Christ_ , it hurt. Chest-deep and wracking, the coughs shook her entire body, ripped up her throat like barbed wire and brought tears to her eyes as they erupted from her mouth. Blood, once a trickle, now filled her mouth, the coppery tang of it making her stomach roll. Stark, cold reality began to settle over her, as she fought for control of her own body…head lolling as her vision began to tunnel, going dark at the edges.

 

Khan’s voice, truly and almost shockingly panicked now, sounded from above her, but she couldn’t answer. Couldn’t even acknowledge him through the relentless coughing that continued to plague her.

 

“Hold on,” he said, voice cracking and stealing the command from his tone. “Rebecca…please… _please_ hold on…”

 

Suddenly, his arms – his warmth – disappeared from around her and she realized, after a moment, that she was lying down, the surface beneath her cold but passably comfortable.

 

A med-table.

 

_Sickbay_.

 

They’d made it.

 

She could hear Khan, still talking out loud – to her, she imagined, though she hadn’t the strength to listen properly. He was making a ruckus, tossing anything that wasn’t immediately useful out of his way, sending drawers and storage bins and exorbitantly expensive diagnostic equipment crashing to the floor, sending supplies scattering.

 

“Metorapan,” she heard him say, a tremble to his voice that she hated to hear, “combined with anetrizine.” The clink of vials, the crumpling tear of a sterile bag. “It will stop your cough. Should ease the pain.”

 

Something was pressed to her neck, just over her jugular. A sting – _hypospray_ –followed almost immediately by the hot/cold rush of the drugs he’d given her as they moved through her system. A moment later, as predicted, the coughing eased…as did the pain in her chest, though her breaths grew even heavier, more difficult to pull in.

 

Duval licked her lips, grimacing at the blood she tasted there. She closed her eyes, tried to breathe...

 

Khan was crashing around again and then he was back at her side, slamming supplies down on the tool tray beside her. She turned her head, watching him tear open another sterile bag, this one containing…she squinted.

 

“What’s…that for…?”

 

“Chest tube.” Khan’s hands were shaking as he leaned over her. He glanced up at her face and she could see how pale he was, could see the horror and _fear_ in his eyes as they skipped over her face. “This will hurt, Rebecca, but you will be able to breathe easier once it is in. Brace yourself.”

 

She felt pressure, a mild pinch. Khan stepped back, his eyes locked on her and she could feel the anticipation…the _hope_ …radiating from him. _God_ , how she wanted to be able to give him what he was hoping _for_ ; wanted to be able to suck in a deep lungful of air and then breathe it out.

 

She wanted so _badly_ to be ok. But she was cold…and she still couldn’t breathe…and she couldn’t feel her feet…and the reality was…

 

Well…

 

The reality was that she just… _wasn’t_. She wasn’t ok.

 

And she was starting to think that she wasn’t going to be.

 

“Well?” Khan reached out, laying a hand against her neck, fingers finding the thread thrum of her pulse just beneath her jaw. “Any better?”

 

He sounded so young in that moment. So young and so hopeful and it flayed her, cut her open and left her raw inside. Tears welled in her eyes, dripped down her cheeks. Her lips trembled as she fought for the breath she needed to say what she wanted to say…while she still could. She reached up, fingers feebly plucking at the strap across his chest – he _had_ brought the trans-warp device.

 

“Not…sorry…” she panted. “You…need it.” She grabbed the strap as best she could, tugged on it. “ _Use…_ it.”

 

“No.” Khan’s face, a beacon to her even through her slowly dimming vision, had gone absolutely ashen, dread pooling in his eyes. He tore his hand away from her as if she had burned him. “ _No_!”

 

Her tears came harder; her breaths grew shallower. “Promise…me. _Use it_ …escape… _live_ …”

 

“ _Enough_!” He spun away, his hands coming up to rake through his hair, head turning first one way and then another, as if desperately searching for a miracle that he just wasn’t going to find. “I will not listen to this!”

 

Duval ignored him – pretended he hadn’t said anything.

 

“ _Promise_ …” she choked out, urgent now.

 

“I said _enough_ , Rebecca,” he roared, furious…frantic… _anguished_. He tore across the room, tripping over a piece of discarded equipment and catching himself on the next medtable over, clumsy in his panic. He pushed himself off, kicked the offending impediment out of the way before launching himself toward the far side of the room. “Stop…stop _talking_. Save your strength.”

 

He was back beside her almost before she’d even realized he’d gone, dumping a transfusion kit at her side, blooming with what looked like miles of sterile tubing. She watched, confused, as he grabbed her arm, turning it palm up before he grabbed the cuff of her sleeve and ripped it in two, tearing it nearly to her shoulder in his haste. Snatching up a hypocatheter attached to the end of one of the long, looping tubes, he leaned over her and jammed it into the crook of her elbow, finding the vein beneath despite his lack of finesse.  

 

It should have hurt, but it didn’t and Duval knew that wasn’t good.

 

Brushing that thought aside, she continued to watch as Khan then turned his attention to his own arm, ripping his sleeve open and then plunging the other hypocatheter into his vein.

 

She wanted to ask what he was doing, but her tongue felt thick in her mouth, her mind growing sluggish. She was breathing even slower now…couldn’t feel her legs…her arms…anything at all anymore really…except…

 

Except…

 

“I…love…you.”

 

It wasn’t at all the declaration she’d always hoped it would be, the words halting and weak when she’d only ever longed to be strong for him. But it was all she had – the only thing she had left to give.

 

Khan, who had flicked on the auto-transfuser and was watching the dark red flow of his blood as it snaked its way through the tubing, froze, his head whipping up, eyes meeting hers, dark with torment. “No,” he whispered, the word breaking on what sounded suspiciously like a sob. “Do not _say_ that, Rebecca,” his voice was oddly thin, _wracked_ with anguish. “Do not _dare_ say that. Not now...not like _this_...”

 

He dropped his eyes then, attention turning to the steadily filling tubing with frenzied focus, squeezing his fist hard, over and over and over again. “Why can this not go _faster_?”  

 

Duval watched him for as long as she could…drank in his jaw…his cheek…the sweep of his dark lashes…the disarrayed fall of his hair across his forehead…

 

He’d been everything she’d never dared to let herself dream of having…

 

And she loved him.

 

“ _Al…ways…”_

 

Her eyes slipped shut, the image of him seared into her quieting mind. The last thing she ever wanted to see…the last thing she _would_ ever see.

 

She sucked in one…last…breath…

 

And then…

 

_Silence_.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Before you skewer and roast me, please note that there is an epilogue to follow. Unless, of course, you’re satisfied with things as they stand. If you’re not, I definitely would recommend you give it a read.


	33. Chapter 33

**Epilogue**

* * *

 

_Noise_.

 

She woke with a gasp, swallowing…gulping… _drinking_ air.

 

There was pain. _Burning_. Searing her.

 

She moaned; a low, animal sound that clawed up her throat.

 

Around her, chaos. A cacophony of noise.

 

_Confusion._

 

“Rebecca? Rebecca, can you hear me?”

 

A voice. Panicked. Shocked. But wrong. All wrong…

 

Familiar though. Female.

 

_Carlson._

 

Hands on her shoulders. Fingers pressing against her neck.

 

“ _Jesus_ …I have a pulse here! Rebecca, if you can hear me, answer me! Come on…open your eyes for me, sweetheart.”

 

She obeyed. Her eyes flew open.

 

_Alive_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First and foremost, let me just say…thank you! Thank you to every person who has read and enjoyed this story. It has been a long…long…long…journey and I can’t believe I’m finally marking it as complete.
> 
> Now, down to brass tacks…there is going to be a sequel to this story. It will be called, Where Dreams & Darkness Collide and I hope to begin posting it sometime in the next couple of weeks. For anyone who has been dying for more from Khan’s perspective, you’ll be happy to know that this story will be his, the way that Somewhere I Have Never Travelled was Rebecca’s (however, don’t be surprised if you catch glimpses here and there of what’s going on with her!). I will post one last note to this story once the first chapter of the sequel is posted, just in case anyone wants to keep following this long and winding road with me!
> 
> Finally, an enormous, can’t-actually-thank-you-enough thank you to my beta…my sister. Xaraphis…this story wouldn’t have been what it was without your constant pushing, prodding and nitpicking. You accepted nothing short of the best that I could give and even when it made me want to scream and throw things, I knew that the story would benefit from it in the end. So again…thank you. I love you!


	34. Author's Note

As promised, this is just an FYI...chapter 1 of the sequel is now posted! So please, if you are so inclined, take a look at Where Dreams & Darkness Collide. Thank you!


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